Blockade Museum

Next door to the Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts is the grim but engrossing Blockade Museum, opened just three months after the blockade was lifted. At that time it had 37,000 exhibits, including real tanks and aeroplanes, but three years later, during Stalin’s repression of the city, the museum was shut, its director shot, and most of the exhibits destroyed or redistributed. It reopened in 1989 and the displays now contain donations from survivors, including propaganda posters from the time and an example of the sawdust-filled tiny piece of bread Leningraders had to survive on. Book in advance for English excursions.