The NRCSA Center in St. Petersburg was founded in 1992 as a private organization teaching Russian to foreigners, and was recognized by the local St Petersburg government as a private language training institute in 1995.

Programs are offered year-round. The facilities are open to all students and include ten modern classrooms, a self-access center, and cafeteria. The teaching environment is friendly, and student and local staff easily socialize both inside and outside the classroom. Students will be taught by their teachers, and guest lecturers from world class academic institutions (ie St. Petersburg State University) often augment the teaching.

The NRCSA Center was also the first in Russia to attract substantial attention from the corporate sector. Among their clients are PWC, Credit Suisse, the EBRD, Scotland Yard, British Airways, the UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross, to name just a few.

In St. Petersburg, the NRCSA Center is very centrally located, and is close to the Metro Ligovsky Prospekt. It is easily accessed from any point in the city. Bars, restaurants, and many theaters are within walking distance. All classrooms are located on the 4th floor of the building, and there are no elevators. The Center is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and provides PC workstations with full Internet access to all its students. The cultural officer who is responsible for the sights program can also arrange for the purchasing of admissions tickets for all venues in the city. The Center's in-house travel agency handles onward journeys to other parts of Russia, deals with visa issues, and arranges rail/flight tickets. Other facilities include a range of Russian and international newspapers, satellite TV, a fast and inexpensive courier service for incoming and outgoing mail, free and unlimited Internet access, and other services.

St. Petersburg is not all that far from the Arctic Circle. This means long and harsh winters with average daytime temperatures of -5 to -10° Celsius (14 to 23° Fahrenheit) when the sun spends a few hazy hours above the horizon before disappearing for the next eighteen. The flip side of this is the fantastic white nights between June 11 and July 1 when there is a brief spate of dusk at around three in the morning and light for the rest of the day. Locals wander about in a zombie-like daze, partly out of sheer wonder at the light in the wee hours and partly from the never-ending partying that goes on at this time of year. Spring comes late to St. Petersburg with snowfall common through April and only in May do trees (and people) start coming to life again. Autumn is absolutely beautiful, with deciduous trees shedding their colors at the beginning of October.

Almost all of the "sights" in St. Petersburg are located in the historic city center, through which runs St. Petersburg's central nervous system and most famous thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospekt. Nevsky's 4.5 kilometer (2.8 mile) stretch from the Admiralty in the north to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in the southeast is lined with shops, bars, restaurants, fancy hotels, and a never-ending tidal wave of pedestrian traffic often harder to navigate than a cavalry charge.

The splendid palaces of the tzars, the world famous Red Square, majestic church towers and impressive underground stations; the hectic pace of modern life in Moscow unfolds against the backdrop of its glorious past. Day and night, the sheer diversity of life is simply fascinating, as are the people with their incomparable warmth and hospitality. The city of 10 million inhabitants is indeed the "Soul of Russia".