With a total population of currently about 4.7 million, St. Petersburg is the second largest urban agglomeration in Russia. Administratively, it is, together with Moscow, the only city in Russia that has the status of a Region ('Subject of the Federation').

The city, which in 2003 celebrated the 300th anniversary of its foundation by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703, was the capital of the Russian Empire until 1917. Designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1990, it is home to some of the world's most important art treasures, and displays one of Europe's largest concentrations of eighteenth and nineteenth century civil and religious architecture.

The city was, and still is, an important manufacturing centre, and as Russia's largest port in the West, a strategic gateway for exports to, and imports from, the markets of the European Union and the Western hemisphere.

St. Petersburg is the second (after Moscow) largest industrial centre of Russia. There are about 600 large and medium industrial enterprises, where about one fourth of working population of the city works. The industry is one of the main sources of budget revenue.