Honorable mention 

You might call it cheating, but we’d reply: “don’t they color our commute?” The first on our list are the lines of the city’s metro – which you’ll often hear referred to by their colors: red, orange, green, blue, and purple. Learn more on how to sound like a local when picking your metro destination from this article – and let’s dive into our actual rainbow selection.

Red

• Starting to assemble our list from the city center, we turn to one of St. Pete’s most iconic red buildings, the Twelve Collegia. In Peter the Great’s time, it housed the Russian government and is now part of the St. Petersburg State University campus. 
• Next, going south, we walk down the Red Bridge (named so after the color of the original wooden bridge located there) across the Moyka River. 
• Further down our red route is the Feodorovskaya Icon Cathedral, which, to an untrained eye, can seem like a part of the Kremlin – a bit of Moscow in St. Petersburg.
• Next stop: the Gothic Revival Chesme Church, an elegant building that doesn’t look like any church you’ve seen before. 

Orange

• Perhaps the most known and oft-visited orange building in the city is St. Michael’s Castle, now part of the State Russian Museum. You’ve likely visited it for one of the museum’s temporary exhibitions (we post regular updates on those in this series).
• Another popular tourist attraction is the Alexander Nevsky Lavra – particularly loved by our team for both the historic cemetery and the handmade vareniki. Admittedly, its complex includes both yellow and orange buildings, so it could be the in-between color in our rainbow.
• The Iron-house, or Titanic, is next on our orange list: an unusually designed, flat-looking building on Fontanka River Emb. It’s part of the Kolomna municipality – the place for your quiet walks.
• The originally designed (resembling a part of a snowflake or a cog-wheel) Chesme Palace neighbors the eponymous church that we’ve mentioned above. Together, they make for a great reason to visit the southern part of the city (or your friends at the nearby ITMO dorm on Lensoveta St.).

Yellow

To be fair, many of the city’s central buildings could be classified as yellow or its hues. We’ve selected some notable examples:

• Previously mentioned in this series as the oldest palace in the city, the Menshikov Palace can also boast a dandelion yellow color, brightening the Universitetskaya Emb.
• Even though the new stage of the Mariinsky Theatre had caused quite a fuss upon its completion, no one can argue with the inviting warm, golden-yellow glow of its interior shining through the glass walls in the evening.
• More classic and conventional, the Alexandrinsky Theatre is the embassy of the sunshine color (and culture, of course) in the city center.
• Those venturing to explore the city’s many famed suburbs will note the stately yellow walls of the Peterhof Palace, harmonizing nicely with all the gold of its spectacular fountains.

Green

• Having mentioned the Red Bridge, we have to include the Green Bridge, too. Yet another crossing over the Moyka River, it was officially named for its color in 1738 by the same order as its counterpart.
• Not that far from the bridge, you’ll find what is without a doubt the city’s most renowned calling card – the Hermitage Museum, located in the emerald-green-colored Winter Palace.
• Another green, this time with a warmer hue, building along the embankment is the Philological Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. The garden within its courtyard houses several sculptures to which the students have attributed magical, grade-raising properties.
• Adding even more culture to our green list is the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater on Fontanka River Emb. Curiously, this isn’t the building’s original color: it used to be golden brown until the 1920s, when it was decided it should stand out more from its surroundings.

Blue

• We promise, we’ll be done with the colorful bridges across the River Moyka soon: the Blue Bridge completes the set.
• As if to baffle every tourist, St. Pete has an abundance of somewhat similar-looking blue cathedrals located throughout the city: Smolny Cathedral, St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral, and St. Sampson's Cathedral. Now you know them all and will never be confused!
• Though pearly white in its exterior, the Trinity Cathedral boasts dreamy blue domes adorned with golden stars. Upon its completion in the late 1830s, it was Russia’s biggest cathedral!
• St. Petersburg Mosque, with its mosaic turquoise exterior, completes the blue stripe of our architectural rainbow.

Indigo & Violet

• Another scandalous edifice has made it onto our colorful list: the Lakhta Center. Arguably, it turns all colors of blue and violet only on clear days, when it reflects the sky – so let’s manifest more of those in the coming spring! Fun fact: on special occasions, the tower lights up with different colors – for instance, green on New Year’s, to symbolize the Christmas tree. 
• Polezhaev’s revenue house is one of the more colorful landmarks inside the otherwise muted colors of Peski, a historic area in central St. Petersburg. Once called “the Carcassonne on Peski,” it does resemble a Medieval castle with its pointed towers and purple-and-creme colors.
• Yet another mention of the Moyka River: take not of Au Ponte Rouge (literally “near the Red Bridge”), the fancy department store that used to house a sewing factory in the Soviet times before going back to its luxurious shopping ways.