Vasilievsky Island juts into the Neva delta at the heart of St Petersburg, and its eastern tip — the Strelka — offers the city's finest panoramic view, with the Winter Palace on one side and the Peter and Paul Fortress on the other. The pair of Rostral Columns that flank the point once served as navigational beacons and still get lit for city celebrations. Peter the Great originally intended this as the city center, and the grand scale shows: the Kunstkamera, Russia's first museum, displays Peter's bizarre anatomical collection, while the university campus spreads across several stately 18th-century buildings. The island's interior has a grid layout unusual for St Petersburg, with numbered "lines" instead of street names. The western end feels genuinely residential and far from the tourist circuit, with a modern waterfront and views toward the Gulf of Finland.