Sennaya Square (Haymarket Square)

Sennaya Square is a square in the centre of Saint Petersburg at the junction of Sadovaya Street and Moskovsky Prospect, one of the busiest spots in the city: three metro lines converge here, along with tram and bus routes. Because of its crowds and turbulent street life the square has long been called the "belly of Petersburg," by analogy with the "belly of Paris"; the surrounding slums are described in Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment."

The square came into being in 1738–1739, when the authorities laid out the Saarskaya Perspective — the future Moskovsky Prospect — to provide a link with Moscow. A vast empty plot at its intersection with Sadovaya Street was put to use as a wholesale hay depot, which gave the square its name, fixed in use from 1764. Under Catherine II trading here was permitted free of charge, to support the urban poor and undermine the power of resellers; 1774 is considered the unofficial birth date of the hay market. The first architectural landmark was the Church of the Dormition, built in 1753–1765 and known as the Savior on Sennaya; in 1818–1820 a guardhouse building was erected to a design by Luigi Rusca and V. I. Beretti, restoring the square's symmetry — today it is a federally protected architectural monument.

In June 1831 the square witnessed a spontaneous "cholera riot" that included the wrecking of the cholera hospital. From the mid-19th century, the area around Sennaya, including the slums of the Vyazemsky Lavra, had the reputation of one of the most dangerous and disreputable parts of the city: market pavilions stood here, thieves and swindlers caught in the act were publicly punished at the guardhouse, and the square itself was covered in a layer of mud and manure.

In 1952 the square was renamed Mira ("Peace") Square, in a plan to make it a link between the historic centre and the new socialist Leningrad; the trading pavilions were demolished and the ground was asphalted. In 1961, as part of an anti-religious campaign, the Church of the Dormition was blown up, and a metro vestibule was built in its place. The square's historic name was restored in 1991. In the 1990s a chaotic street market sprang up here, and only in 2003 was the square reconstructed: a chapel was erected in memory of the destroyed church, and on the square itself a stele called the "Tower of Peace" was installed — a gift from France for the city's 300th anniversary, bearing the word "peace" in fifty languages, the work of Jean-Michel Wilmotte and Clara Halter. Because of cracks that appeared during the abnormal heat of 2010, the tower was dismantled and never restored. The remaining trading pavilions were finally demolished in 2016.