Nevsky Prospekt Metro Station

Nevsky Prospekt is a station on the Moscow-Petrograd Line of the metro, located between Sennaya Ploshchad and Gorkovskaya in the heart of the historic centre. It opened on 1 July 1963 and takes its name from the main city thoroughfare beneath which it runs. The station was the first in the city to be built entirely without an above-ground pavilion.

The station was originally planned to be sited near Plekhanov Square, now Kazanskaya Square, and appeared in the design documents under other names. Building the vestibule and the passages with exits onto Mikhailovskaya and Dumskaya Streets and Nevsky Prospect required demolishing part of the existing development: a portico by Luigi Rusca and the Perinnye Ryady arcade, built by Giacomo Quarenghi, were dismantled. The portico was rebuilt in 1972 with altered proportions. Later, when the exit to the Griboyedov Canal was created, the Engelhardt House, which today houses the Philharmonic's Small Hall, had to be partly dismantled and reassembled.

The station's underground hall is a deep-level pylon station, built to a design by the architect Svyatoslav Mayofis and the engineer Boris Maximov at a depth of 63 metres. The vaults and pylons are plastered and trimmed along their lower edge with ribs of polished aluminium, while the central hall is paved with gabbro and labradorite. The track walls, originally faced with red glass tiles, were replaced with artificial stone in 2006. The station's decor is modest for such a central location: its only ornament is the text of the decree awarding the metro system the Order of Lenin, displayed in the transfer hall.

In November 1967 a passage to Gostiny Dvor opened at the station's northern end, and in April 1968 a second exit, shared by both stations, opened onto the Griboyedov Canal. This created the only interchange in the St Petersburg metro with deliberately separated passenger flows: some escalators lead only to Gostiny Dvor, others only to the canal exit. While driving the tunnel towards Gorkovskaya, builders unexpectedly ran into an unknown water-bearing pocket in the ground beneath the Field of Mars, forcing the tunnel to be sharply deepened at the maximum permissible gradient — as a train moves, its first carriage ends up six metres lower than its last. Because of this, a station by the Field of Mars was never built, and the section became one of the deepest in the world, reaching a depth of 126 metres.

Today the station can only be reached through underground pedestrian passages — the oldest structures of their kind in the city. The vestibule's lighting has been updated more than once: mercury lamps gave way to sodium ones, and since 2021 LED fixtures have been used. Thanks to its location at the intersection of Nevsky Prospect and the Griboyedov Canal, the station remains one of the busiest hubs in the city centre.

The station's history shows the price paid for building the metro amid dense historic development: the demolition and reconstruction of architectural monuments, unexpected obstacles underground, and changes to the original plans. Yet the station has long since become an inseparable part of central St Petersburg's transport framework, carrying tens of thousands of passengers through it every day.