On May 25-26, St. Petersburg will celebrate its 299th birthday. Preparations for this event are at full speed. Plans for celebration include carnivals, concerts, performances and many other entertainments.

The festival will begin with the laying of flowers to the Bronze Horseman. During this ceremony names of new honourable citizens will be announced.

A traditional international festival of military brass bands will be held on Nevsky Prospect, with about 1000 musicians from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Italy, the Ukraine, Estonia, Finland.

The centre of the festival will be Palace (Dvortsovaya) Square. At 1 p.m. a parade of military schools will be held, at 2 p.m. a concert and entertaining program will begin, at 6 p.m. a performance of a chorus will begin.

The culmination of the program will be a gala performance with Russian pop stars, which starts at 8 p.m. At the same time a theatrical performance on the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island will begin. At 11 p.m. fire works will conclude the festival.

Celebration will be also held in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress.

Next day, on Sunday, carnival will be entertaining people from 11 a.m. till 4 p.m. all along Nevsky Prospect.

St. Petersburg suburbs will join the celebration. Petergof will cerebrate its fountains opening, Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin) will held the traditional carnival.

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