Episode 5: Nevsky Prospekt, St Petersburg’s Grandest Street

Last Updated on February 22, 2023 by Hannah Henderson

Nevsky Prospekt ‘is Petersburg’ according to the Gogol, writing in the 1830s, and this long road is still today the backbone of the city. We explore it, stopping off at three of its best-known buildings, starting with the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, burial ground of Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky. Then it’s on to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, scene of so many imperial funerals and of the Te Deum held to celebrate the delivery of Moscow from the Emperor Napoleon. And finally, we take in the onion-domed, riotously colourful Church on the Spilled Blood, built on the exact spot where Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 and hear the story behind that.

MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON

More information about St Petersburg coming soon.

Listen to the POdcast

Links & Reading

Useful websites for tourists
St Petersburg City Tourist Information Bureau
St Petersburg.Com (Tourist Information)

2 guidebooks to St Petersburg
Eyewitness Travel Guide to St Petersburg
Lonely Planet Guide to St Petersburg

Travel Book
Among the Russians by Colin Thubron

History
Russian History, a Very Short Introduction by Geoffrey Hosking
The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport

Biography
Peter the Great by Lindsey Hughes
Peter the Great by Derek Wilson
Catherine the Great by Simon Dixon
Catherine the Great by Robert K Massie
Rasputin by Frances Welch
Four Sisters by Helen Rappaport (the 4 daughters of Czar Nicholas II)
The Diary of Lena Mukhina (A diary of the Siege of Leningrad)

Art and Culture
A Short Life of Pushkin by Robert Chandler
Nijinsky by Lucy Moore
Rudolf Nuryev The Life by Julie Kavanagh
Anna of all the Russias The Life of Anna Akhmatova by Elaine Feinstein

Anthologies
St Petersburg A Traveller’s Companion by Laurence Kelly
City Pick St Petersburg edited by Heather Reyes
Literary St Petersburg by Elaine Blair

Novels set in St Petersburg
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Siege by Helen Dunmore
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov