Nevsky Prospect

Saint Petersburg's main street stretches for four and a half kilometers, linking the Admiralty with the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and crossing the Moika, the Griboyedov Canal, and the Fontanka along the way. Its width varies: near Gostiny Dvor it reaches sixty meters, while near the Moika it narrows to twenty-five. Locals call the odd-numbered side the "shady side" and the even-numbered side the "sunny side," the more popular one for walking. Together with its surrounding ensemble, the thoroughfare is included on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

The avenue's history began in the 1710s, when it became necessary to connect the Admiralty fortress-shipyard, founded in 1704, with the new monastery on the site of the future Lavra, and with the old Novgorod Road. Monks laid their section of the road through marshy forest from 1712 to 1718, while work proceeded to meet it from the Admiralty side. Because the two stretches were built independently, their junction created the characteristic bend in the avenue near Vosstaniya Square. Already in the 1720s the road was paved with stone and lined with rows of birch trees, and from 1723 Russia's first street lighting appeared here — oil lamps.

The avenue did not receive its modern name right away: for decades many unofficial variants were in use, ranging from "the road to the Nevsky Monastery" to "the Grand Perspective." The official name "Nevskaya Prospektivnaya Street" was given to the thoroughfare on April 20, 1738, and the form familiar to us today took hold by the 1780s. Stone construction based on Mikhail Zemtsov's model designs unfolded from the late 1730s, and the avenue's final appearance as an architectural ensemble took shape in the first third of the nineteenth century, when Andrei Voronikhin's Kazan Cathedral was built, the Admiralty building was reconstructed to Andreyan Zakharov's design, and Carlo Rossi's grand ensembles were built, linking the avenue to Palace Square, the Square of the Arts, and Ostrovsky Square.

In 1832 the avenue was paved with wooden block pavement — the first surface of its kind in Russia, which lasted until 1924. Around the Nikolaevsky railway station, built in 1851, Znamenskaya Square took shape, with the equestrian monument to Alexander III installed there in 1909. After 1918 the thoroughfare bore the name "Prospekt 25 Oktyabrya" (25th of October Avenue) for nearly a quarter of a century, and its historic name was restored on January 13, 1944, on the eve of the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad. During the months of the siege the avenue suffered severely: Gostiny Dvor burned, buildings collapsed under bombing and shelling, and in winter the street was buried under a meter of snow.

In the second half of the twentieth century, metro stations appeared beneath the avenue, and pedestrian underpasses were built. Today, on holidays — New Year's, Victory Day, City Day — the stretch from the Fontanka to Palace Square is closed to traffic and turned into a pedestrian zone, and on September 12 a religious procession is held here in honor of Saint Alexander Nevsky.

Nevsky Prospect, which inspired Nikolai Gogol to write his story of the same name, remains the symbolic heart of the city: along its length are concentrated palaces, museums, theatres, shops, and churches from different eras, and for three centuries now the street itself has served as the main stage of Saint Petersburg's urban life.