Architectural, Cultural sights in St Petersburg
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A
Mendeleev Museum
In the twelve Colleges, the building where Dmitry Mendeleev invented the periodic table of elements now contains the Mendeleev Museum. His cosy study has been lovingly preserved and you can see his desk (where he always stood rather than sat) and some early drafts of the periodic table.
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B
Peter’s Cabin
In a patch of trees east of the fortress is a little stone building known as Peter’s Cabin, St Petersburg’s oldest surviving structure. This log cabin was supposedly built in three days in May 1703 for Peter to live in while he supervised the construction of the fortress and city. During Catherine the Great’s time, the house was protected by a bricklayer. The cabin has always been a sentimental site for St Petersburg. During WWII, Soviet soldiers would take an oath of allegiance to the city here, vowing to protect it from the Germans, before disappearing to the front. After the Siege of Leningrad, this was the first museum to reopen to the public. The little cabin feels m…
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C
Raskolnikov House
This innocuous house on the corner of Stolyarny per (called ‘S… lane’ in the book) is one of two possible locations of the attic apartment of Rodyon Raskolnikov, protagonist of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Those who claim this is the place go further, saying that Rodyon retrieved the murder weapon from a street-sweeper’s storage bin inside the tunnel leading to the courtyard. The house is marked by a sculpture of Dostoevsky. The inscription says something to the effect of ‘The tragic fate of the people of this area of St Petersburg formed the foundation of Dostoevsky’s passionate sermon of goodness for all mankind’. Other Dostoevsky connoisseurs argue that R…
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D
Sampsonievsky Cathedral
This fascinating pea-green baroque cathedral dates from 1740 and is a beautiful highlight of a remarkably dull industrial area of the Vyborg Side – it’s well worth the trip out here. It is believed to be the church where Catherine the Great married her one-eyed lover Grigory Potemkin in a secret ceremony in 1774. Today it’s a delightful place, having been repainted and restored to its original glory on the outside. Restoration on the inside continues and it looks marvellous. The cathedral’s most interesting feature is the calendar of saints, two enormous panels on either side of the nave, each representing six months of the year and every day decorated with a mini-icon of…
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E
Sergei Kirov Museum
The Sergei Kirov Museum is in the 4th- and 5th-floor apartment where one of Stalin’s henchmen spent his last days. Kirov’s murder started a wave of deadly repression throughout Russia. Don’t miss the Party leader’s death clothes, hung out for reverence: you can see the tiny, bloodstained hole in the back of his cap where he was shot, and the torn seam on his jacket’s left breast where doctors tried to revive his heart. The comfy apartment shows how the Bolshevik elite really lived and there’s also a charming section on the daily lives of St Petersburg’s children from 1917 to 1940.
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F
Dostoevsky Houses
Dostoevsky lived in three flats on this tiny street alone. From 1861 to 1863, he lived at No 1. In 1864, he spent one month living in the faded red building at No 9, before moving to No 7. Here, he lived from 1864 to 1867 and wrote Crime and Punishment; indeed, the route taken by the novel’s antihero Raskolnikov to murder the old woman moneylender passed directly under his window. While this area has changed enormously, it’s still possible to catch glimpses of the grim reality of slum life that pervaded this place in the mid-19th century.
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G
Pushkin House
The old customs house, topped with statues and a dome, is now home to the Institute of Russian Literature. Fondly called Pushkin House, the handsome building contains a small literary museum with dusty exhibits on Tolstoy, Gogol, Lermontov and Turgenev, as well as a room dedicated to the writers of the Silver Age. Call in advance for an English-language tour.
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