The Strelka — the "spit" — is the eastern tip of Vasilievsky Island where the Neva divides into the Big and Little Neva and the imperial city laid out its most ceremonial water frontage. The two terracotta Rostral Columns, decorated with the prows of captured ships and topped with bowls that were once lit as navigation beacons, frame a semicircular plaza facing the old Stock Exchange — now the Central Naval Museum.
The view back across the river from the Strelka is the postcard view of central St Petersburg: the Peter and Paul Fortress to the north, the Winter Palace and the Hermitage to the south, the Admiralty spire rising in between. Wedding parties pose here all summer, and on big civic holidays the rostral columns are lit with gas flares — a survival of the original 19th-century lighting. The square fills with crowds for the Scarlet Sails fireworks in late June.