St Petersburg is a great literary city.

Walk the streets of Dostoevsky, like in Crime and Punishment, following the footsteps of Raskolnikov. There are even special tours which visit the places. See the fading yellow buildings, looming large, driving to madness. The squalor and poverty he personally experienced is reflected in his novels. There is also a Dosteovsky museum where he used to live.

Walk alongside the mighty Neva, with it's granite embankments, so glorified by Pushkin. Or the Bronze horseman depicting city founder Peter the Great looming large over the city. Pushkin house is a museum.

Walk down Nevsky Prospekt.
'All powerful Nevsky Prospekt' said Gogol in his sketch bearing the name of this famous street.
Imagine yourself in Petersburg to be in a Gogolian nightmare. This is the little man pittted against the big artificial city with it's structures of power and insane obedience to rank and status.

Watch the sheer artificiality and pre planning of old Petersburg as Tsar Peter dragged Russia forward with a European capital as a window on the west, the facades, ensembles, baroque and the squares. Built on cold rationale as a complete antithesis to the Russian soul. As Dostoevsky said--'the most abstract and artificial city on earth'

Anna Akhmatova was a Soviet poet, who variously lost husband and son to the Gulag camps. You can visit her apartment.

Petersburg- city of words. This is a map of the city with literary quotations from people associated with it.
mtblog.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/St_pete_map_web-1.jpeg

www.saint-petersburg.com/museums/dostoyevsky-memorial-museum.asp

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Not particularly easy to find, as even when you’ve located the street, it’s hidden away in a courtyard behind a black wooden gate with a step-through opening. Once you do find it however, there awaits an interesting insight into the life of Russia’s most famous poet. It’s a fairly typical museum house, with all the usual artifacts, so you need the audio guide to fill in the stories behind them. It’s very likely you’ll have the place to yourself as it’s off the beaten tourist track. There’s a café there too, once you’ve had your fill of Pushkin.

Naberezhnaya Reki Moyki (near the Hermitage)

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