IN 1779 Catherine the Great, the Russian Empress, turned to Charles Cameron, a British architect, to renovate one of her palaces in St Petersburg.

He reigned as court favourite for the next 25 years.

But now, more than two centuries later, Russian authorities are again calling on a Briton to revamp their picturesque but dilapidated second city.

Lord Foster of Thames Bank, the creator of London’s “Gherkin” and Berlin’s new Reichstag building, was this week chosen to redevelop a 19-acre island in St Petersburg called New Holland. Created in 1719, New Holland was Russia’s first naval port and housed shipbuilding warehouses, a blacksmith’s workshop, an arsenal and the Russian navy jail.

The triangular island was a closed military area in Soviet times but today is a wasteland of decrepit buildings.

Now it is to be transformed into a $319 million (£183 million) cultural complex including a theatre, a concert hall, a museum, hotels and offices.

“The project will regenerate New Holland, presenting a unique opportunity to transform the city of St Petersburg into the foremost venue for performance and visual arts in the world,” a statement from Foster and Partners said.

The development is at the centre of a drive to attract millions more foreign visitors to a city desperately short of world-class tourist facilities. But it is also part of a broader campaign, overseen by President Putin, to revitalise the town where he was born and where he worked in the mayor’s office in the 1990s. In 2003 he presided over lavish celebrations, attended by world leaders, to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city by Tsar Peter the Great. This summer world leaders will gather there for the annual G8 summit.

Petersburgers, who have a history of rivalry with Muscovites, are welcoming the influx of investment to a city long neglected by central government. Sergei Padalko, head of the St Petersburg-based architects Vitruvio and Sons, said that he hoped the New Holland project would rejuvenate the entire surrounding area. “The island is in a terrible condition,” he told The Times. “Something needed to be done. Otherwise, in our climate, it could be completely destroyed in five years.”

Valentina Matviyenko, the governor of St Petersburg, said Lord Foster’s design had been chosen because it would best preserve the island’s historical buildings, while adapting them for modern purposes.

The project is the latest example of how Governor Matviyenko is turning to Russia’s business elite to help to renovate historical buildings that the state can no longer afford to support.

The company behind Lord Foster’s design is ST Novaya Gollandia, which is owned by the Moscow-based oil and construction tycoon Shalva Chigirinsky.

LORD FOSTER'S EXPORTS

1988 Won contract to build Metro in Bilbao, Spain

1993 Carrée d’Art Modern art gallery in Nîmes

1997 Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt; at 259m (850ft), tallest building in Europe until 2004

1999 Reichstag revamp in Berlin

2001 Expo MRT station in Singapore

2004 Millau viaduct in France — tallest bridge in the world

2005 Library of the Philological Faculty at Free University of Berlin

2006 Hearst Tower in New York