Saint Petersburg is a beautiful city with so many places to see. It has a lot of faces. There’s Saint Petersburg with beautiful palaces, residences and there’s Saint Petersburg hidden from everyone. Façade part as a rule is very pretty, carved out but if one gets into the yard they will get into the labyrinth of yards big and small ones. Saint Petersburg is famous for its yards. That’s why partly the capital was moved from Saint Petersburg to Moscow in 1917 because such a network of tunnels created very good opportunities for anti revolution rebellions.
Such houses used to be called revenue houses (or tenement buildings) because they were built to get revenue, profit as a purpose. They all were rented. It could be a lot of land where one could build a revenue house, live there and rent its apartments out to other people, sometimes people would rent even “corners” in the same room. 4 corners in 1 room, 4 neighbors. We have an expression in Russian: “to have your own corner” means to have your own apartment. Owners of such houses tried to fill in every square meter that is why architecture is very interesting. One can spend 15 minutes in such a labyrinth and get out in a different street or district. Subway station Dostoevskaya is famous for such revenue houses. There every house, every street have memories about one of the greatest writers the world has ever known Fyodor Dostoevsky: Blacksmith market where the author of “Crime and Punishment” used to go every day to buy his favorite food to eat: marinated apples. Vladimirskaya Church where he said prayers every day and where his funeral service took place. Finally, the last house where he lived, wrote “The Karamazov brothers” and died in 1881. You will find out about this and much more if you join my tour.
