I
City (pop., 2000: 248,232), west-central Florida, U.S. It lies near the tip of Pinellas Peninsula, adjacent to Tampa Bay .
Settled in 1876, it became in the late 1940s one of the first Florida cities to encourage tourists to spend their retirement years there. It is a winter resort and a centre for yachting and sport fishing. The city is connected by several bridges with a string of sandy islands (west) between the Gulf of Mexico and Boca Ciega Bay; seaside communities such as St. Pete Beach are located there. To the south, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across the lower bay links the city to Bradenton and Sarasota.
II
Russian Sankt-Peterburg formerly (1914–24) Petrograd or (1924–91) Leningrad
City (pop., 2001 est.: metro. area, 4,627,800) and port, northwestern Russia.
Located on the delta of the Neva River where it enters the Gulf of Finland, it is Russia's second largest city after Moscow . Founded by Peter I (the Great) in 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire from 1712 to 1917. It was the scene of the Decembrist revolt in 1825 and the Bloody Sunday attack on workers in the Russian Revolution of 1905 . The original centre of the Bolshevik revolution (see Russian Revolution of 1917 ), it lost its capital status to Moscow in 1918. In World War II it underwent a seige by German forces (September 1941–January 1944), during which as many as one million people died (see Siege of Leningrad ). From 1990 a reformist city council and mayor helped swing the country from the control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . St. Petersburg is a cultural, educational, and industrial centre and Russia's largest seaport. Industries include engineering, printing, manufacturing, and shipbuilding. One of Europe's most beautiful cities, it is intersected by many canals and crossed by more than 600 bridges; it is the site of many palaces, cathedrals, museums (see Hermitage ), and historical monuments.