Vasilyevsky Island, Russia Live Cam

The eastern point of Vasilyevsky Island divides the Neva as it runs through St Petersburg, in the north-west of Russia. The webcam looks across at it from the Peter and Paul Fortress.

The two brick columns on the point are rostral columns, studded with the prows of captured ships in the Roman manner. They were put up in 1810 as lighthouses for the port that then worked here, and their gas torches are still lit on a few days a year.

The island was meant to be the centre of the city, laid out on a grid with canals down every street. The canals were never dug, but the streets are still numbered as lines rather than named.