Having posted Art Lebedev Studio’s impressive unofficial map of the St. Petersburg Metro, I was reminded by a few readers that I’m yet to post the actual official map. As it’s definitely interesting to compare the two, here’s the real deal.
Unfortunately, it’s a pretty tired-looking effort, with some very loosely-rendered and distorted islands in the middle of the Neva River, and some awful, dated-looking radial gradients inside station markers. The map omits any points of interest within the historic city centre (but shows the location of the Metro Museum at the eastern end of the M3 line!), limiting its usefulness for tourists unfamiliar with the city – something the Lebedev map has well and truly set its sights on improving.
I do quite like the sweeping, lazy curves that the red M1 and Purple M5 lines make through the middle of the map: if they were drawn with a little more precision, they could make a nice visual hook for the map, but the overall draughtsmanship is quite poor, unfortunately.
Our rating: Certainly usable as a basic metro map, but very uninspired. Certainly not befitting of Russia’s “second city”. Two stars.