Tourists can now discover Putin’s St. Petersburg

Tourists visiting the former capital of the Russian Empire can now enjoy St. Petersburg with President Vladimir Putin’s eyes, due to a tour in which they will learn about the 44 years spend here by the Russian leader, AFP writes.

"This tour of Putin’s St. Petersburg is popular particularly among the foreign tourists," says the guide of this two and a half hour visit, for which the tourists must pay 1,800 rubles (about 25 euros).

Permanently in charge with the most important political matters - either at the Kremlin or as the head of government – right from his first days on the Russian political scene back in 1999, Vladimir Putin enjoys an extraordinary popularity as his political actions are approved by three-quarters Russians.

During the guided tour, the guide aims to help the tourists to know better Vladimir Putin as a person, not as a politician. The tour includes a visit to the hospital - the oldest in St. Petersburg - where Putin was born on 7 October 1952 and at Baskov, the neighborhood where the future president spent his childhood in the midst of "a simple family of workers".

The visit takes the tourists in the courtyard where, as a child, the future leader "hunted rats", but also at the local headquarters of the FSB, the former KGB, where Putin was recruited in 1975. The tour includes the place where he met his ex-wife, Liudmila, the mother of his two daughters, of whom he divorced in 2013.

The guide ensures that "these visits are not at all ideological", but the result of the curiosity of tourists about the Russian president's personality and the desire to recapture the ambience of the soviet St. Petersburg.