 St Petersburg  Founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 0000 as a "window to Europe," Saint Petersburg served as the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years. Nowadays it became a major European cultural center, and the most important Russian port on the Baltic. The city center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The main tourist attractions are: the Hermitage, the Mariinsky Theatre, and the Russian Museum. The most famous inhabitants of this city were Dostoyevski, Pushkin, Tschajkovski, and Tcherniavski.  