A plan to build Europe’s tallest skyscraper in the historic city of St Petersburg was approved yesterday despite warnings that it threatened the city’s status as a world heritage site.

Valentina Matviyenko, the Governor of St Petersburg, gave the go-ahead to the Russian energy giant Gazprom to build the Okhta Centre, ignoring opposition from residents and from Unesco, the United Nations cultural watchdog.

At 403 metres (1,300ft), the spiralling glass spike will be four times the maximum height of 100 metres permitted by planning rules in the Tsarist-era capital, an edict intended to preserve the architectural plan of Peter the Great.

Ms Matviyenko signed an exemption that allowed Gazprom to proceed after local politicians said that they supported the $3 billion (£1.8 billion) project.

The Okhta Centre will tower over Europe’s current tallest building, the 300-metre Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt, but will remain an also-ran among global skyscrapers. The Burj Dubai project is expected to become the world’s tallest building, at 818 metres, when it is completed this year, overtaking the 553-metre CN Tower in Toronto.

Designed by the British architects RMJM, the Okhta tower will be more than three times the height of St Peter & Paul Cathedral, at present St Petersburg’s tallest building.

Unesco expressed “grave concern” in July about the impact of the tower and warned Russian officials that it could place St Petersburg on the “World Heritage in Danger” list next year. It urged them to suspend work on the project, adopt a different design and submit a report by February on measures to protect the 306-year-old city centre.

The concerns are likely to go unheeded because Gazprom is Russia’s most powerful company, with close ties to President Medvedev, its former chairman, and to Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister. Both men are from St Petersburg and Mrs Matviyenko, Russia’s most powerful woman politician, is one of Mr Putin’s most loyal appointees.

The complex will house the headquarters of Gazprom Neft, the company’s oil arm, and include office space, a hotel, a concert hall, an art gallery and business centre. The five-sided tower has already been nicknamed the “Corn on the Cob” for its twisting design, which is intended to change colour throughout the day in the shifting sunlight. The architects have said that the design was inspired by the tower’s location, next to the Neva River, and the constantly changing reflections of light on water.

There were violent protests at a public hearing to discuss the project this month. Objectors chanting “shame on Gazprom” were thrown out of the meeting by police and the company’s security guards.

The tower has been dogged by controversy since it was chosen in an international competition in 2006 — and after Lord Foster of Thamesbank and two other leading architects, Rafael Viñoly and Kisho Kurokawa, resigned from the judging panel. The project looked to be at risk of cancellation this year when the city government backed out of taking a 49 per cent stake, saying that it could no longer afford to spend money on the tower because of the global downturn.

Alexei Miller, the Gazprom chief, pledged that the company would fund the whole development by itself. Construction is scheduled to be completed by 2012, although doubts persist about the company’s willingness to finance the tower after the slump in energy prices and its own share value in the economic crisis.

The recession has hurt skyscraper projects in Moscow have already been hurt by the recession, including the 612-metre Russia Tower, which was planned as Europe’s tallest building before the project was frozen last year. The 506-metre Federation Tower in the Moskva City business district has also suffered delays as its developer fights to reschedule debts.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found