HIDDENGEM:FOR DOSTOEVSKY, who set many of his novels here, St Petersburg was "the most abstract and imaginary city" on earth. He was referring not to its chimerical appearance, rising from glassy rivers and canals through Corinthian columns and pediments to the open sky, but to its history of dreadful privation and almost unimaginable excess.
The most extraordinary character in the city's history is Peter the Great, whose possessions are scattered across his city like toys across a bedroom floor. The city's bizarre underbelly is revealed in an 18th-century baroque building on Vasilevsky Island. Founded by Peter the Great in 1714, the Kunstkamera museum offers macabre entertainment disguised as biological education.
The tsar offered rich rewards for all "human monsters" as well as any other unknown animals. These were then pickled in vodka and put on display. In Peter's day the Kunstkamera even had live exhibits. These days you'll see a curious collection of pickled freaks. It's not for the weak of stomach. Little wonder that visitors used to be given a glass of vodka before entering the museum.
Peter had a fascination for anatomy, illness and death and believed himself to be an excellent surgeon. Part of his collection was made up of teeth he himself had drawn, not always because they needed to come out. Many unsuspecting passers-by had to relinquish molars before their ruler's lust for surgery was satisfied, among them a singer, a person who made tablecloths, a bishop of Rostov and a fast-walking messenger. Not fast-walking enough, it seems.
Defenders of the sieged Leningrad, heroes of the Soviet Union and participants of battles in Afghanistan are not required to pay an admission charge. Regular adults pay 200 roubles.
Kunstkamera, 3 University Embankment, St Petersburg, Russia, 00-7-812-3281412 , www.kunstkamera.ru/en
Do you know of a hidden gem? E-mail us at go@irish-times.ie