Things to Do in St. Petersburg in March

March is the only month you can book the 9:30 AM slot and still feel like Catherine the Great might wander past. The heating inside the Winter Palace works, so you're not shivering while staring at Rembrandts. Crowds are thin enough that guards will let you linger in the Peacock Clock room instead of hustling you along.

With the season winding down, rehearsal schedules relax and the theatre offers mid-morning backstage walks. You'll stand on the stage where Nijinsky once leapt, peek into the tsar's box, and hear the wooden floors creak in the costume workshops - all without the summer tour groups.

The river is still solid enough that locals commute across it on foot. Walking from the Winter Palace to the Peter-and-Paul Fortress on the ice gives you 360-degree skyline views no boat ever matches. Finish with a hunt for the ornate metro stations - Avtovo's chandeliers and Narvskaya's mosaic panels - where March's thin crowds mean empty platforms good for photos.

The 1744 factory runs hands-on tours only in low season. You'll paint a cobalt net pattern on a plate that's fired overnight and shipped to your hotel next morning. The kilns are warm, the smell of wet clay cuts through the winter air, and the master painters - mostly women whose families have worked here for three generations - have time to chat.

March herring season means fresh sturgeon roe appears on black-market menus. Underground restaurants in 200-year-old wine cellars - think low brick vaults and candle wax dripping onto linen tablecloths - pair three grades of caviar (sterlet, sevruga, beluga) with horseradish-infused vodkas served from frozen shotsef pitchers. The chill outside makes the 12°C (54°F) cellar feel almost tropical.