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Saint Petersburg (Russia)

Sankt-Peterburg

Last modified: 2021-07-24 by valentin poposki
Keywords: saint petersburg | leningrad | sceptre | anchor (white) | anchor: tripple | anchors: crossed | anchors: 2 | error | santi (f.) |
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Санкт-Петербург

Flag of Saint Petersburg image by Tomislav Šipek, 7 April 2020


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Presentation of Saint Petersburg City

(Note: You need a Unicode-aware software and font to correctly view the Cyrillic text on this page. See here transliteration details).

  • Name (English): Saint Petersburg City • (Russian, short form): Санкт-Петербург | Sankt-Petersburg • (Russian, long form): Город Федерального Подчинения Санкт-Петербург | Gorod Federalhnogo Podĉineniâ Sankt-Peterburg
  • Capital (Russian): Санкт-Петербург | Sankt-Peterburg • (english): Saint Petersburg • (former name): Leningrad | Ленинград (1924-199X), Petrograd | Петроград (1914-1924)
  • Area: 2 000 km2 (~800 sq.mi.) • Population: 4 660 600 inhabitants in 2000
  • Status: Federal city (Город Федерального Подчинения | Gorod Federalhnogo Podĉineniâ) within the Russian Federation
  • Federal District: Northwestern Region • Economic region: Northwestern Region
  • License plate code: 78 • Ham radio code: SP • ISO 3166-2 code: SPE
  • Flag adopted on 1991.09.06 • Coat of arms adopted on 1991.09.06

Though the administrative center of the Leningrad region is St. Petersburg the old name of region is conserved. It’s very curious. In future possible unification of Region and S. Petersburg in one subject of Russian Federation (now they’re different subjects). By the way, when Leningrad was renamed in Sankt-Petersburg, it not was subject of RSFSR (administrative center of region only).
Andrey Yashlawsky, 19 Jan 1999


Description of the flag

The background is red (krasnyĭ), and not dark red (purpurnyĭ).
Michael Simakov, 11 Jan 2000

Ratio 3:2 The Regulation on the Flag was adopted on 8, June, 1992 by City Council (decision No96). Article 2:

The flag of St-Petersburg is a rectangular red field with two crossed silver anchors (the river anchor and the sea anchor). Gold scepter surmounted with double-headed eagle is placed over the anchors.
Ratio 1:1,5 Reverse side of the flag is a mirror of obverse side.
Coat of arms were adopted by Presidium of City Council of Leningrad (former name of St. Petersburg) on 6, September, 1991 (Decision 270) and confirmed on 2, December, 1991 by City Council of St. Petersburg. In fact the arms were designed in early XVIII c. by Italian heraldist F. Santi, the assistant of Heroldmaster, officially adopted in 1780 and readopted in 1991. St. Petersburg — former capital of Russia. This status is symbolized with scepter.
Victor Lomantsov, 05 Mar 2002

These are two different types of anchors — triple for river, and other for sea. There were placed on coat of arms because St. Petersburg has sea and river ports.
Michael Simakov, 20 Dec 1999


Variant Flags

Armorial banner

Wrong flag of Saint Petersburg image by Krystof Huk, 9 August 2016

While staying in St. Petersburg, I got my hands on a red banner, embroidered with the greater arms of the city. The seller wasn't able to tell me what the flag is, nor have I been able to find it anywhere else. Does anybody have any idea what it is?
Kryštof Huk, 9 August 2016

This is an unofficial flag made by flag-makers. You can buy several types of city flag in St-P. - red, white-blue-red with coat of arms, black-yellow-white with coat of arms. But the red flag with anchors and scepter is the official one.
For example: http://rusatribut.ru/products/flag-imperskij-s-bolshim-gerbom-sankt-peterburga-semya-gorod-strana
Victor Lomantsov, 10 August 2016

Smaller components

Flag of Saint Petersburg image by Tomislav Šipek, 7 April 2020

Widespread but incorrect image of the flag

Wrong flag of Saint Petersburg image by Gvido Pettersons, 11 April 2000

This image was originally made by me. In 1995 I did an article on St. Petersburg flag for Spanish Gaceta de Banderas [ban]. I had no photos of the flag or its detailed images. I only saw this flag on TV. I sent to editor of Gaceta the description of the flag without the good image. But there was a very rough sketch of the flag in my letter (I was sure, the sketch is too bad for publishing). Editor of Gaceta published this sketch in No 18. Then I decided to reconstruct the image. The reconstruction was not very good too: the scepter was in wrong form, the anchors were too large etc. But it was better then first sketch. Later I have found good image, but the article in Gaceta No 20 (april 1995) was published with my reconstruction of the flag. Several years ago I was surprised : my incorrect image made in 1995 is reproduced on many web sites (without my name, of course). And at last I was shocked: I saw this image on the official web page of St. Petersburg! My wrong image copied by Petersburg webmaster! (Gvido probably has taken the image from there and vectorized it).
Victor Lomantsov, 05 March 2002


St Petersburg 1992-2003

Flag of Saint Petersburg image by Tomislav Šipek, 7 April 2020

Earlier flags were in dimensions 1:2


Rainbow flag of Saint Petersburg

Rainbow flag of Saint Petersburg image by Tomislav Todorović, 26 December 2015

Rainbow flag with red at the top and violet at the bottom, violet stripe extending upwards in form of several landmarks of Saint Petersburg, is presented at Wikimedia Commons since 2007.
Photos of the flag in real use can be found here (image) and here (image).
These photos are dated after the creation of the image from Wikimedia Commons, so it remains unclear whether the existing flags are made after that image, or the image was made after some real-life sources. Regardless of that, this is a flag whose existence is now verified.
Image of flag is derived from the above-mentioned image from Wikimedia Commons.
Tomislav Todorović, 26 December 2015