'Roofing': The best way to see Saint Petersburg

No where is off limits to St Petersburg's young roofers: The Hermitage Museum. Photo: AFP

Saint Petersburg has long been a tourist favourite, but if this band of young Russian thrill-seekers is to be believed, the best way to see the country's imperial capital is by hopping roof to roof.

Perched atop an officers' barracks in the heart of the city are Edik, 20, Alyona, 18, Dima, 28, and Nikolai, 35.

They chat breezily, laugh, smoke and take photos from their roost, dozens of metres above the street.

To get there they had to break into a nearby attic and hop across several roofs - nothing terribly complicated for experienced "roofers" such as themselves. "The roofs, they are for those who want to see another Saint Petersburg, to see how beautiful it is," says Edik, who has been roofing since he was 14.

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The pastel palaces and golden-domed churches of Russia's former royal city have become the roofers' elevated playground. Locked attics don't stand in their way.

The prize for those who scale rain gutters and pipes is an unsurpassed panorama of the city of the tsars - and the chance to post a trophy photo on favourite social media sites.

Daniel Netorte, 23, is a highly experienced roofer who rattles off Saint Petersburg landmarks like a mountain climber listing the peaks he has bagged: the golden spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, a cupola of Church of the Saint Saviour on Spilled Blood located on the picturesque Griboyedova Canal, the Winter Palace of the tsars where the Hermitage Museum is now located, even the local headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB security service.

Roofing "is for me a way to explore the city, to have a bit of adventure, to test myself," says Daniel, a medical student at the University of Saint Petersburg.

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'Roofing': The best way to see Saint Petersburg