Nevsky Prospect
Nevsky Prospect (Russian: Не́вский проспе́кт, tr. Nevsky Prospekt) is the main street (high street) in the federal city of Saint Petersburg in Russia. It takes its name from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the monastery which stands at the eastern end of the street, and which in turn commemorates the Russian hero Prince Saint Alexander Nevsky (1221–1263). Following his founding of Saint Petersburg in 1703, Tsar Peter I planned the course of the street as the beginning of the road to Novgorod and Moscow. The avenue runs from the Admiralty in the west to the Moscow Railway Station and, after veering slightly southwards at Vosstaniya Square, to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Nikolai Gogol described the feverish life of the avenue in his story "Nevsky Prospekt", published in 1835. Fyodor Dostoevsky often employed Nevsky Prospekt as a setting in his works, such as Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Double: A Petersburg Poem (1846). The café-restaurant which the famous writers of the 19th-century Golden Age of the Russian literature frequented still remains as "Literary Cafe" on Nevsky Prospect.
Quotes
- There is nothing better than Nevsky Prospect, at least in St. Petersburg; for him he is everything. Why this street does not shine – the beauty of our capital! I know that none of its pale and bureaucratic residents will exchange for all the benefits of Nevsky Prospect. Not only someone who is twenty-five years old, a wonderful mustache and an amazingly tailored frock coat, but even someone with white hair popping out on their chin and a head as smooth as a silver dish is delighted with Nevsky Prospect. And ladies! Oh, ladies are even more pleased with Nevsky Prospect. And who doesn't like it? As soon as you climb onto Nevsky Prospekt, it already smells of one party. At least he had some necessary, necessary business, but, having climbed on it, surely, you will forget about any business. Here is the only place where people are shown unnecessarily, where their need and mercantile interest, which embraces the whole of Petersburg, has not driven them.
- Andrew Ivanovich Bogdanov Historical, geographical and topographic description of St. Petersburg from the beginning of its establishment, from 1703 to 1751. 10. Admiralty Island.
- At about six in the evening we arrived safely in St. Petersburg, which has changed so much since my departure from there that I did not recognize it at all. From the very beginning we entered a long and wide alley, (a small part of the road not far from the Admiralty), and justly called the avenue, because its end is almost invisible. It was laid only in a few years and exclusively by the hands of captured Swedes. Despite the fact that the trees planted on both sides of it in three or four rows are still small, it is unusually beautiful in its enormous length and the purity in which it is kept (captured Swedes must clean it every Saturday), and it makes a wonderful appearance , which I have not seen anywhere else. On the Admiralty, a beautiful and huge building at the end of this road, there is a beautiful and rather tall spitz, which goes directly opposite the avenue.
- Friedrich-Wilhelm von Berchholtz, Diary entry from 4 [O.S. 1721 ] July.
