St. Petersburg is Hyperreal

In St. Petersburg, when they are doing construction on a building, the put a picture over it of what the building is supposed to look like This preserves the look of the city, which is homogenous and planned to an insane degree. In the last shot above of Morskaya Ulitza, spot the building with a picture over it in the back (it's the one in the light). The entire city is basically in the general style of the buildings in that shot, with nary a skyscraper or instance of modern architecture in site. It gives the place a labyrinthine quality, especially at night, and Marina and I spent several hours wondering around lost very late last evening.

Edit: It should be said that the city's architectural style is beautiful and also somewhat haunting. It's just weird to have a whole city built in the same basic vein, kind of like the architectural equivalent to the Japanese national style of drawing comics.