Peter's imperial capital hides a very cheap city inside it: cathedrals that charge nothing, a courtyard mosaicked by children, canteens where a three-course tray is 400 ₽, and a metro of marble palaces for 86 ₽. Three days, most of it free.
Nevsky Prospekt 25: a working Orthodox cathedral with a 111-metre colonnade copied from St Peter's in Rome. Free entry daily 07:00–20:00 — Kutuzov's tomb inside, then walk the canal to the Bank Bridge griffins.
A residential courtyard at ulitsa Chaykovskogo 2 entirely clad in smalt mosaic — benches, lions, a sphinx and a blazing sun — made since the 1980s by children of the Small Academy of Arts. Open gate, no ticket office.
Peter the Great's 1704 pleasure garden between the Fontanka and the Neva: over 200 marble copies of Italian statues, fountains reconstructed in 2012, and the Coffee House pavilion. Open 10:00–22:00 in summer, closed all April for drying.
The eastern spit of Vasilievsky Island: two 32-metre red Rostral Columns, the old Stock Exchange, and the widest free panorama in the city — Peter and Paul Fortress to the left, the Winter Palace to the right. Costs nothing at any hour.
The city's oldest covered market, opened 1927, two minutes from Dostoevskaya metro at Kuznechny pereulok 3: Uzbek dried fruit, Dagestani cheeses, pickled garlic, honey and smoked fish. Vendors expect you to taste first. Open 08:00–20:00.
A Soviet-style self-service canteen where you push a tray past borscht, herring under a fur coat, buckwheat, cutlets and kompot. A full three-course tray comes to roughly 350–500 ₽ — less than a single coffee in the tourist cafés opposite.
Open since 1958 at Bolshaya Konyushennaya 25 and barely altered: sugar-dusted pyshki fried behind the counter, sweet coffee with condensed milk ladled from a vat, marble tables you stand at. Cash preferred, queue moves fast, closes 20:00.
The cheapest drinking strip in the city, tucked behind Gostiny Dvor in an 18th-century trading arcade: a row of one-room bars where draught beer runs 150–250 ₽, shots start at 100 ₽ and nobody charges a cover before 23:00.
262 spiral steps up the drum to a 43-metre open gallery encircling the gold dome: the full 360 degrees from the Admiralty spire to the Gulf of Finland. Sold as a separate cheap ticket — you never enter the paid cathedral interior.
Walking onto Zayachy Island costs nothing — only the cathedral and museums sell tickets. The ramparts, the sandy Neva beach where locals sunbathe standing against the wall, and the cannon fired from Naryshkin Bastion at noon are all free.
The grandest station on the red line, opened 1955: 46 columns, 16 of them faced in moulded cut glass that glows like ice. One fare buys the whole underground palace circuit — Kirovsky Zavod, Narvskaya and Pushkinskaya sit on the same line.
A 19th-century cable factory on the western shore of Vasilievsky Island reopened as a free public waterfront: a concrete promenade facing the Gulf of Finland, skaters, food trucks, warehouse galleries and the cleanest sunset line in the city.