In 2003, celebrating the three-hundredth anniversary of the founding of St Petersburg, I stood on the steps of the Cathedral of our Lady of Kazan, on the Nevsky Prospekt, to introduce a BBC programme (‘Sunday Worship’) on Radio 4. I looked out at this magnificent thoroughfare, spreading wide to right and left, which Alexandre Dumas once called the ‘street of religious tolerance’. This remarkable book takes us, on its first page, to precisely the same spot. The text reflects on the religious origins of this most cosmopolitan of cities, once home to an agglomeration of foreign construction workers, soon to be joined by merchants, diplomats, even tourists, a heritage two hundred years later to be all but destroyed by the ravages of Communist atheism. The cumbersome title belies the interest of this book's contents, listing, chapter by chapter, the groups of foreign churches which were built in the city of Peter the Great, detailing their architecture and their dates. Never before has there been a study of the Dutch, Swedish, Anglican, Moravian, Estonian, Roman Catholic and Uniate Churches of St Petersburg. An anniversary conference, also in 2003, revealed how much of their history had been preserved in the Soviet archives, against all expectation, and often in amazingly good order. Now, at last, the story can be told of a unique chapter in ecumenical history. Never again should the Moscow Patriarchate claim ‘territorial rights’ over the whole of Russia!