ART-TOUR is a creative project from an international team of architects. It began in St. Petersburg in 1993 shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain, when the city gradually opened itself to the world after years of cultural isolation. Colleagues from around the world started coming together. For us and our peers, architecture became the common language.

Our early travels began with mastering the architectural alphabet by walking along famous streets in cities we had only known before from textbooks. As the years went by, roads were replaced by trails. ART-TOUR reached beyond its urban focus, moving into the woods and the most remote villages.

We journeyed to the shores of the disappearing Aral Sea, climbed the Forbidden Kingdom of Mustang, watched beluga whales from the Solovetsky Islands, crossed Lake Baikal in a tiny boat, hiked to the headwaters of the Lena, visited the villages of the old orthodox believers at the Russia-Mongolia border, and reached the edge of the earth peering at the North Pole beyond the horizon. Leaving Europe behind, we moved on to the Kyzylkum Desert, the ancient Tibetan Guge Kingdom, Persepolis, Machu Picchu, and Kilimanjaro.

There are more destinations waiting to be explored: Japan, New Zealand, Patagonia… After that, who knows what’s next?

Once you start travelling, it becomes an addiction, especially when you go with friends or meet like-minded people along the way. This is ART-TOUR’s mission as well as its key advantage: any city in the world remains faceless until you befriend a local. We are both guides and architects, and our travelers, architects and others, are open-minded and curious, of all ages, professions, and nationalities. We share a passion for reading history on stones, which encourages lively conversation and inspires us all to be creative kindred spirits.

The catalyst for ART-TOUR’s journeys can come from anywhere – literature, history, music, a small detail on a building that catches our eye. Once the idea takes shape around a central theme, the rest falls into place.

When you travel with us, the goal is to never get tired of being surprised. Keep your eyes open. Squinting is allowed in blizzards and sandstorms…and when taking photos.

In Saint Petersburg, we have the home-court advantage. Our city has countless stories to tell from its short history. It is enchanting year-round, but the White Nights give the city a magical glow and create a special ambience for our evening excursions. We’re reinventing flaneuring – an exquisite art that inspired the great artists, writers and poets of last two centuries to create their masterpieces. Unlike most urban guides, we focus not only on the classic ensembles of the city centre, but on its impressive industrial underside, Soviet and contemporary architecture as well. Our aim here is to learn together the language in which the city speaks to us – and to allow our fellow explorers to see the many-faced Venice of the North in its entirety.

We aim to open new countries to our friends and ourselves as we see each place in part through your eyes. So bring our ideas – we’re waiting to transform them into unique journeys!