What I propose today is not the usual tourist tour of the royal palaces of St. Petersburg, large museums and imposing neoclassical buildings, but a walk in the bowels of the most European of Russian cities.
A journey in one of the deepest subways in the world, a tour in the places of Dostoevsky, of Raskolnikov, by the brothers Karamazov, Nabokov and Lolita, accompanied by the sound of the melodies of the disciples of Rimsky-Korsakov and Glinka, blessed by St. Isaac and St. Nicholas, cheered by the shrill shouting of street vendors and patrons, dazzled by the glitter of the shop windows on Nevsky Prospect to be lulled by the waves of the Neva.
So follow me and I will lead you through the most intense contrasts, contradictions and oppositions of communist society in search of redemption.
Wherever you stay, wake up early and take the metropolitan train to the station closest to you. The underground lines there are 5 of them and they are more than a hundred meters below street level, boasting, in addition to tens and tens of meters long escalators, stations that are real architectural works, like the Moscow metro. Your arrival point is the Nevsky Prospect station. This is where our adventure begins.
So let's walk the Nevsky prospect, the most important and luxurious St. Petersburg street, let's get onto Sadovaya and walk up to Sennaja Square, the square of hay, the square of peace. Looking around us, we will seem to be somewhere else, in a parallel universe. No longer luxury but chaos, disorder, turmoil, noise, even poverty.
If in the 700s it housed the fodder and livestock market which had earned it the name of Piazza del Fieno, and in the 800th century it was a destination for drunkards, idle and ill-intentioned, in Soviet times it changed its face and name, becoming the Piazza della Pace. A large underground interchange station has been built there, markets and brothels have been banned but, in the end and fortunately, it has not been distorted: the true soul of Sennaja has never died out, it has preserved its features of a caravanserai although better structured. Stalls, warehouses, artisans and traders of all kinds are here ready to negotiate to sell their goods at a price that does not disappoint either party.
To watch and caress their shouting raises the soul of Dostoevsky that, from the numerous houses in which he lived, one of which today is museum dedicated to him, it spreads over every square centimeter of sky and earth. And if in one house in Kaznacheyskaya Ulitsa he wrote The Brothers Karamazov and in another he gave birth Crime and Punishment, in an apartment on the top floor of Stolyarny Pereulok he made Raskolnikov and his unhappy victim live. Going further down the Griboyedova canal, we find ourselves without realizing it on Piazza Del Teatro and, once more, it seems that someone is playing with our mind.
The stalls, the hawkers, the drunkards, now faded memory, leave room for the tranquility and order of the Mariinsky district on which the theater of the same name dominates, which, named after Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna, has launched some of the most important Russian theatrical actors and dancers.
From the Theater Square, crossing the Bridge of the Lions, exclusively pedestrian, we enter the Glinka ulica to find ourselves in New Holland neighborhood, an artificial island, currently in a state of neglect, built on an ancient shipyard. We continue towards the Church of St. Isaac, whose golden dome is the dominant element of all St. Petersburg and then head towards the Cathedral of St. Nicholas of the Sea, along the Kryukov canal. With a Baroque style, in the colors of white and blue that testify to the influence of the architect Rastrelli, the church of San Nicola was the only one that was not closed during the Soviet regime, when religious worship was prohibited.
Taking the Sadovaya again, we first skirt the elegant Yusupov Palace surrounded by beautiful gardens, then the now known Sennaja Square to find ourselves, as in a circle, on Nevsky Prospect.
Another world, again and again, invades us. Let's immerse ourselves again in the luxury and chaos of the tourist and fashionable St.Petersburg, take this important road towards the north and head towards the Nabokov's childhood home, author of Lolita, his most famous and controversial novel. On the left, along Nevsky Prospect, we notice the decadent Palace of the Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich and finally stop on the Neva where a catamaran awaits us that will take us on board and take us sailing, from bridge to bridge, through the city, its splendid sunsets and the long white nights that Dostoevsky, with his writings, has helped to make famous.
