In 1718-1719 the Prospect was hewed through the swampy ground of the dense wild forest, which covered the territory at that time. The Nevskiy Prospect appeared in 1710 as two roads leading from the Admiralty and from the Alexander Nevskiy Monastery to the Old Novgorod high road, but it quickly became adorned with beautiful buildings, squares and bridges and became the very center of the bustling, rapidly growing city. From the very beginning Peter the Great kept a close eye on the development of the Prospect to make sure all the buildings were constructed in the same High style and formed a single line of facades interrupted only by the Canals or Rivers. The part from the Admiralty to the present Square of Insurrection was known as a Big Prospect, which was the main entrance to the city. In the thirties of the 18th century the road was called the Neva Prospect. In the sixties of the 18th a singe thoroughfare was formed which from the end of the 18th century acquired the present name of Nevskiy Prospect. Though the Soviets tried renaming it 25th of October Avenue in honor of their revolution, the name never stuck.
At the beginning of the 1900s, it was one of Europe's grandest boulevards, with cobble-stoned sidewalks and a track down the middle for horse-drawn trams. On cither side of the tracks were wooden paving blocks to muffle the sound of horse-drawn carriages - an innovation that was apparently the first in the world and for which the prospect was dubbed the quietest main street in Europe. Today this is a four and a half kilometres long range of beautiful buildings, running from the Admiralty to the Moscow Railway Station and then, after a slight turn, to the Alexander Nevskiy Lavra. Pushing through its crowds is an essential St.Petersburg experience, and if you're there on a holiday evening (like City Day), the sight of thousands pouring like a stream down its middle is one you'll not soon forget.
The part between the Square of Insurrection and the Alexander Nevskiy Square is traditionally called Old Nevskiy Prospect. The Moyka River (the Narodny Bridge), the Fontanka River (the Anichkov Bridge), and the Griboedova Canal (the Kazan Bridge) cross Nevskiy Prospect.
Unique building of Kazan Cathedral ("Kazansky sobor") or The Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan on Nevskiy Prospect immediately attracts one's attention. The Kazan Cathedral encircles a small square with a double row of beautiful columns - an impressive colonnade (96 13 metre high columns). The architect Andrey Voronikhin, who built this church in 1801-1811, was greatly inspired by the St,Peter's Basilica in Rome. The Kazan Cathedral was thought to be a Russian version of St.Peter's and to become the main church of Russia.
The Kazan CathedralIt was planned in the shape of the Latin Cross. Voronikhin had a difficult task to solve. The matter was that in keeping with the church canons the altar was to face eastwards, hence the main entrance and the facade faced westwards. Thus Nevskiy Prospect was to front the side facade of the cathedral, and not the main one. Voronikhin solved the problem supplying the cathedral with a grand semicircular colonnade opening on the Prospect that added to its beauty. Moreover, the cathedral as well as the colonnade were elevated on to a granite socle with wide staircases. The wings of the colonnade that form a square in front of the cathedral have monumental portals at the ends, simultaneously serving as passageways. Voronikhin intended to erect a similar colonnade facing south. The architect Voronikhin who had formerly been Count Stroganov's serf later to become the professor of architecture in the Academy of Arts.
After the War of 1812, during which Napoleon was defeated, the church is considered to be a monument to the Russian victory. Russian soldiers brought French flags and keys from French towns and fortresses to the Cathedral. The Cathedral was named after a "miracle-making" icon of Our Lady of Kazan, which the church housed till the early 1930s. The Bolsheviks closed the Cathedral in 1929, and the liturgy was banned. Since 1932 it housed the collection of the Museum of History of Religion and Atheism, which displayed numerous pieces of religious art and served anticlerical propaganda purposes. A couple of years ago regular services were resumed in the cathedral, though it still shares the premises with the museum, from whose name the word "atheism" has now been omitted.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan is one of the top achievements of high classical architecture and a brilliant example of the arts synthesis. The monumental cast-iron railing of exquisite design embraces a small square in front of the main, western entrance to the cathedral. Huge bas-reliefs, approximately 15 metres long and almost two metres high, depicting Biblical subjects, grace the two butt-ends of the building facing into Nevskiy Avenue. The bas-relief above the left butt-end of the building was executed by the famous Russian sculptor Ivan Martos on the subject Moses Parting the Waters, the one above the right butt-end is a depiction of the Brozen Serpent by the sculptor Ivan Prokofyev. The cathedral's highly artistic interior decoration consisting of 56 monolithic red granite columns and a mosaic floor composed of multifarious Karelian marbles are bound to produce an unforgettable impression on you. The cathedral's interior is the work of Borovikovsky, Shebuyev, Kiprensky, Yegorov, Ivanov and other outstanding Russian artists of the beginning of the 19th century. They painted the iconostasis and other parts of the cathedral. The monumental cast-iron railing of exquisite design embraces a small square in front of the main entrance to the cathedral. In the niches of the Cathedral there are four-meter-high statues of princes Vladimir and Alexander Nevskiy and St.John the Baptist and Apostle Andrew the First Called.
The public garden set up there in 1935-1936 is decorated with a granite fountain (1809, architect Thomas de Thomon), transferred here from the Tsarskoselskaya road in 1934. The importance of the Kazan Cathedral as a memorial to the heroes of the Patriotic War is emphasized by the monuments to Field-Marshals M.Kutuzov, who won the most important campaign of 1812, and Barclay de Tolli put up in front of it in 1837. The Cathedral also is the burial place of Kutuzov.
Opposite the Kazan Cathedral is St.Petersburg's biggest bookshop, Dom Knigi, topped by the globe emblem of the Singer sewing machine company, which constructed the building in 1902-1904. The building also housed the American consulate for a few years prior to WWI. Just behind the Kazan Cathedral, a bit south of the Central Train Ticket Center, sits the Bankovsky bridge, one of St.Petersburg's loveliest bridges. In the block of Nevskiy Prospect over the canal from Kazan Cathedral, pavement artists cluster in front of the Central Art Salon. Suspended by cables emerging from the mouths of golden-winged griffins, the wooden bridge affords a splendid view north up the Griboedova Canal past Nevskiy Prospect to the picturesque Russian-style Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood.
In addition to the many churches of different denominations (which prompted the French writer Alexander Dumas to call Nevskiy "the street of religious tolerance") there are many more attractions around. Just a stone's throw from Nevskiy, right by the Grand Hotel Europe, there are Arts Square and the Russian Museum.
No sooner had the Prospect been laid, than the first stone Gostiny Dvor was built to bring together all the scanty shops scattered all over the city. In 1736 it was burnt to the ground by fire and twenty years later Rastrelli was commissioned to design a new department store called the Grand Gostiny Dvor at the corner of the Nevskiy Prospect and the Sennaya street. The construction of the ornate Baroque building had been already under way when the investors cut off the funding. They hired a less ambitious architect Delamote and in 1785 he constructed the two-storey and more than one kilometre long Classical building without any extra decoration. Later the so-called "silver rows" for the sale of silver-work and jewellery were built west of the Grand Gostiny Dvor. In 1799 the high tower was added to the buildings and after the silver rows were a bit rearranged the whole ensemble served as the City Duma, the tower with the clock on ulitsa Dumskaya, an institution of the St.Petersburg's local government. Besides, the building served as a kind of cultural centre. Its activity ranged from chamber concerts of the Russian Musical Society to poetical and literature assemblies attended by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Alexander Blok and Sergei Yesenin.
Although it originally consisted of just 178 separate shops, Gostiny Dvor was severely damaged during the 900-day Siege of Leningrad and was subsequently renovated to vastly increase its trading space and become the largest store in St.Petersburg. A quarter of the expansive complex is currently under renovation but the store remains open for business. One- fourth of the complex is currently under renovation, and a long wooden fence stretching along Nevskiy has become a St.Petersburg version of London's Hyde Park Speakers Corner, attracting activists from different parties, special interest groups and what not... The fence was recently removed but the "Speaker's Corner" is still there.
Today Gostiny Dvor is a huge department store, which is being gradually turned into a shopping mall, since a significant part of its 164,690 square feet of trading space is rented out to smaller shops.
The Vorontsov Palace on Sadovaya ulitsa, opposite the south-east side of Gostiny Dvor, is a noble town house by Rastrelli. It's now a military school for young cadets.
On the other side of Nevskiy, in the arcade at No 48, the Passazh department store is beautiful to look at (notice the glass ceilings) and packed with pricey goods, but has a decidedly less than exciting atmosphere. Downstairs in the basement, there's a well-stocked Western supermarket.
Tucked in a recess between the banks and the cafe near ulitsa Mikhailovskaya there is the Armenian Church (1771-80), one of two in St.Petersburg. The Soviet regime deemed it reasonable to bash the place to bits and install a 2nd floor, which blocked the view of the cupola.
An enormous statue of Catherine the Great stands on Ostrovskogo Square. The statue depicts, according to the Blue Guide, 'The towering figure of the Empress standing above her close associates'. Well, at least three of these were her known lovers: Orlov, Potyomkin and Suvorov.
This airy square, commonly referred to as the Catherine Gardens, was created by Carlo Rossi in the 1820s and 1830s, and its west side is taken up by the lavish National Library of Russia, St.Petersburg's biggest with some 31 million items, nearly a sixth of which is in foreign languages.
Rossi's Pushkin Theatre (formerly the Alexandrinsky Theatre) at the south end of the square is one of Russia's most important. In 1896 the opening night of Chekhov's The Seagull was so badly received here that the playwright fled to wander anonymously among the crowds on Nevskiy Prospect.
Behind the theatre, on ulitsa Zodchego Rossi, is a continuation of Rossi'sensemble. It is proportion deified: it's 22m wide and high and 220m long. The Vaganova School of Choreography situated here is the Kirov Ballet's training school, where Pavlova, Nijinsky, Nureyev and others learned their art.
The Anichkov Palace (1741-1750, the city's second palace), between ploshchad Ostrovskogo and the Fontanka River (its main facade faces the river and was once joined to it by a canal), was home to several imperial favourites, including Catherine the Great's lover Grigory Potyomkin (who graciously accepted it as a gift from her). A slew of architects, including Rastrelli and Rossi, worked on it. It became the city's largest Pioneer Club headquarters after 1935 and to this day houses over 100 after- school clubs for over 10,000 children.
Nevskiy Prospect crosses the Fontanka on the Anichkov bridge, with famous 1840s statues (sculpted by the German Klodt) of rearing horses at its four comers.
The red 1840s Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, at Nevskiy 41, provides a photogenic baroque backdrop. It now houses a rather amusing Wax Museum. Between the Fontanka and Moscow Station, Nevskiy Prospect has fewer historic buildings but heaps more chi-chi shops and cinemas, and in the center of the strip is the Sheraton Nevskij Palace Hotel.
Marking the division of Nevskiy Prospect and Old Nevskiy Prospect is Uprising Square, whose landmarks are the giant granite pillar with the Commie star, the Moscow Station, and the animation screen atop the building next to the station. Note the writing on top of Hotel Oktyabrskaya across from the station: ????? ????? ?????????, (Hero City Leningrad). Several cities were designated "hero cities" for heroism, stoicism and losses during WWII.
Old Nevskiy juts off the north-eastern side of the square and heads south-east to the Alexandra Nevskogo bridge. Its charm is in its relative desolation and laid-back mood.
There are only three buildings that were built this century on Nevskiy Prospect: the Aeroflot building (house 7), the Singer Sewing Company building (now Dom Knigi, house 28) and the House of School (Nevskiy 14) on the wall of which is a blue-and-white stenciled sign maintained since WWII and a reminder of the Seige, starting ????????! ("Grazhdane!"). This sign translates as "Citizens! At times of artillery bombardment this side of the street is most dangerous!"
Inner Nevskiy, ulitsa Malaya Morskaya and ulitsa Bolshaya Morskaya were the heart of the pre-revolution financial district. Points of interest include ulitsa Malaya Morskaya 13, where Tchaikovsky died in 1893.
Just before the Moyka River, the Cafe Literaturnoe is, despite being a repugnant tourist trap, worth peeping into for its Pushkin associations and ambience. Across the Moyka, Rastrelli's green Stroganov Palace (1752-1754) has kept most of its original appearance.
Metro: Nevskiy Prospect/Gostiniy Dvor