Old photos · Russia
Old photos of Saint Petersburg
Second only to Moscow here, from the first photographs of the 1840s to the Leningrad of the 1980s — a city whose centre was never rebuilt wholesale, so its old photographs still line up with its streets.
Time Portal's archive holds about 156,000 photographs of Saint Petersburg (Petrograd, Leningrad), taken between 1840 and 2000, each pinned to the spot where the photographer stood. 69% of them date from 1955 or later and are free to browse at map.timeportal.app with no account; the older ones open with Pro. The oldest, dated 1840–1845 in the archive, shows a wing of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
- Photographs
- 156,000
- Oldest
- 1840–1845
- Busiest decade
- 1980s
- Free, 1955 on
- 69%
How many photographs, decade by decade
The busiest decades for Saint Petersburg are the 1980s and the 1970s — 26,622 and 25,731 photographs. 4,791 were taken before 1900. Everything from 1955 onward is free to open on the map; the older photographs are part of Pro.
| Decade | Relative size | Photographs |
|---|---|---|
| before 1860 | 267 | |
| 1860s | 696 | |
| 1870s | 572 | |
| 1880s | 828 | |
| 1890s | 2,428 | |
| 1900s | 7,932 | |
| 1910s | 6,847 | |
| 1920s | 4,798 | |
| 1930s | 7,947 | |
| 1940s | 8,739 | |
| 1950s | 19,393 | |
| 1960s | 24,547 | |
| 1970s | 25,731 | |
| 1980s | 26,622 | |
| 1990s | 18,695 |
Where the photographs were taken
Counted in a small square around each place — about 250 metres each way — so a number is every photograph taken there, of the place itself or of the street beside it. Each place opens the map on that spot.
| Place | Photos | Oldest |
|---|---|---|
| Palace Square and the Winter Palace | 5,997 | 1852–1855 |
| Nevsky Prospect at Kazan Cathedral | 3,416 | 1853 |
| St Isaac's Cathedral | 2,120 | 1853 |
| The Peter and Paul Fortress | 2,001 | 1857 |
| The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood | 844 | 1883 |
| Uprising Square and Moskovsky Station | 1,690 | 1857 |
What changed
Saint Petersburg's centre was never rebuilt wholesale, which is what makes its photographs so easy to match today: the Nevsky Prospect of the 1900s is recognisably the Nevsky of now. What changed was the name — Petrograd from 1914, Leningrad from 1924, Saint Petersburg again from 1991 — and a number of churches, among them the Church of the Sign on Znamenskaya Square, pulled down in 1940 for a metro station that opened in 1955.
The photographs also carry the 872 days of the siege, from September 1941 to January 1944, when shelling and hunger emptied the same streets.
Questions about old photos of Saint Petersburg
Where can I see old photos of Saint Petersburg on a map?
On Time Portal: about 156,000 photographs of Saint Petersburg, each pinned where it was taken, most with the direction the camera faced. The map is free in any browser at map.timeportal.app — photographs from 1955 on need no account — and there is an app for iPhone and iPad.
What is the oldest photograph of Saint Petersburg in the archive?
The oldest precisely dated photograph, from 1840–1845, shows a wing of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. 4,791 of the Saint Petersburg photographs were taken before 1900.
Which years of Saint Petersburg are best covered?
The 1980s, with 26,622 photographs, and the 1970s, with 25,731. 69% of the Saint Petersburg photographs date from 1955 or later.
Open Saint Petersburg on the map
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The counts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 — credit Time Portal and link here. The photographs are not ours to license: they belong to their photographers and the archives that keep them.