The first Peter’s Walking Tour was given on May 31, 1996. It was a White Nights tour, and the people who took it were four Canadian travellers – Peter treated his first customers to a bottle of champagne at dawn, at the end of the tour. The champagne was happily consumed on the steps of the metro – the station was still closed. The names of the Canadians were Ritchie, Joe, Linda and Tessa – would be nice to hear from you guys. In the peak of the tourist season of 1996 Peter was running up to ten full-length walking tours a week all by himself. The tours were run out of the International Youth Hostel, the first one in Russia.
In autumn 1997, planning to leave St. Petersburg for a year of volunteer work in Africa, Peter offered his friend Michael to pick up the job, in order not to lose customers and the reputation. Thus, the Tours transformed from a seasonal freelance fun job to a stable, long-running business.
Nick appeared on stage in 1999. He’d been a freelance guide before – we just eliminated the competition by offering him a job with Peter’s Walking Tours, and we can’t say he was too unhappy. A fluent speaker of the Texan variety of English language and charismatic frontman of a funk-n-soul band, Nick nicely diluted the otherwise conservative society of Her Majesty’s fine habits appreciators that was PWT.
The greatest hit that Peter’s Walking Tours ever produced were the famed Rooftop Tours. You may find detailed accounts in the press articles dated before 2000, see our Media Archive. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end – read our ‘Obituary Letter’, published in May 2001. We do not organise the Rooftop Tours any longer.
Alina and Olga both came in during 2002. We are very happy to finally have ladies in the club. Olga is our expert museum guide, fully licensed to give tours of the Hermitage and other major museums. Alina is still not sure whether to pursue the career of a tour guide or to push it on toward her degree in arts. If she opts for the latter, we secretly hope to have a Master of Arts guide in our team in five years:-)
Angela is our most recent arrival. An energetic St Petersburg native, Angela returned in early 2003 after having lived in Oz for four impressive years. Now Angela is not only bilingual but also bicultural – she’s gradually recovering her Russian and getting rid of the strange habit of walking upside down.
Dmitri joined us in spring 2004, and Vera followed half a year later. We are eight now, and still feel like growing!
To learn more about our guides, go The Guides page.
Many changes followed: our expert Italian guide Ania joined Peterswalk (was it 2010?), then Eugene, then Zhenya, Anastasia, Konstantin (2015), and in 2016 Elena. Elena started as a guide for the bicycle tours first, but hopefully will broaden her range and start doing walks too.
It’s 2017, and our team is offering a range of tours: the daily Original Walk (running continuously since 1996), several bicycle tours each week during the season, private tours on pretty much any theme there is in St Petersburg, custom-made tour programmes for cruise passengers, canal boat tours.