St Petersburg was built as a European imperial city, and architecturally it is still very much that. (Outskirts are different, just like in Paris.) Religion (Or

St Petersburg was built as a European imperial city, and architecturally it is still very much that. (Outskirts are different, just like in Paris.) Religion (Orthodox Christianity) and script (Cyrillic) are different from the Western and Central Europe, true, but culturally it's a vibrant mix of different European and different Asian (especially Central Asian) influences. The isolation you mentioned did happen but it was not total, and I would say in some respects (especially scientific) there was less isolation then than, say, before the XIX century.