Saint-Petersburg is one of the most beautiful and exciting cities in the world. Besides it is a city of literature. Many famous Russian writers lived and created their works here.
As the cultural capital of Russia, St. Petersburg has always been centre stage for the life and work of famous Russian writers, such as Pushkin, Griboyedov, Lermontov, Gogol, Nekrasov, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Blok, Nabokov, Akhmatova, Esenin, Tolstoy, Brodsky and others. The beautiful city with its combination of compact streets and wide avenues has inspired poets and writers to place the characters of great works. I think the best place to begin literary exploration is St. Petersburg.
It is the place where the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin lived. Alexander Pushkin is Russia’s most famous and best loved poet. He was born in Moscow. But spent many years of his life in St Petersburg. Many of his first poems were set in Tzarskoe Selo. The town of Pushkin, which surrounds the Tsarskoe Selo has numerous sights connected to Alexander Sergeevich, including a museum in the former Imperial Lycee, where he was schooled.
This literary museum is housed in Alexander Pushkin's memorial apartment where he lived between 1836 and 1837, and died after being mortally wounded in a dramatic duel. Visitors can step into the museum and see the study of the great poet and writer of the famous epic novel in verse, "Eugene Onegin", and the well-known story "The Queen of Spades", both of which were later turned into operas by the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky. Ivan SergeevichTurgenev is associated with the Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
In 1834 he transferred from the University of Moscow to the Philological Department of the Faculty of Philosophy of Petersburg University (graduated from it in 1837). Some works of Turgenev were rarely set in St. Petersburg. The production of his comedy A Month in the Country put on the stage of Alexandrinsky Theatre in 1879 was the beginning of his popularity as a playwright. When he came to St. Petersburg, he usually stayed in the center, not far from Nevsky Prospect.
Alltogether, 17 of his St. Petersburg addresses are known. St. Petersburg was home to several journals in which Turgenev published, as well as to several of his friends. It was also the place where he began his stormy love affair with the singer Polina Viardo, which lasted for 40 years.
There is a memorial plaque on the house at 13 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Street where Turgenev lived in 1858-60. Although he died in France, Turgenev was also buried in the city, as he had requested. The monument to Turgenev was placed on Manezhnaya Square in 2001. The statue was made by the sculptors Yan Neiman and Valentin Sveshnikov, who used Turgenev's death mask when sculpting the writer's face. Turgenev is depicted seated on a bench.
Neiman said of the sculpture that they hoped to show Turgenev not just as a great writer, but also as a permanent wanderer who flitted back and forward between Russia and France. The outstanding Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky studied at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Military Engineering and lived here for many years. He scorned Mathematics and began to study the literature of foreign writers such as Shakespeare, Victor Hugo and others.
St Petersburg became the setting for his greatest works. You can book the excursion "Petersburg of Dostoevsky" and visit the addresses of the heroes of Dostoevsky's novels "Idiot" and "Crime and Punishment". The Dostoevsky House-Museum welcomes visitors from all over the world. It was the final home of the remarkable Russian writer. He completed there his last great novel, The Brothers Karamazov, in 1880. In the museum you can see paintings and many items relating to the life of Dostoevsky.
After visiting this exhibition, tourists might want to have a stroll over to the old house of the Lender Lady at 104 Griboedova Canal, to the house of Raskolnikov at 19 Grazhdanskaya Street, and to the house at 73 Griboedova Canal, where Sonya Marmeladova used to stay. Every year in early July the city celebrates Dostoevsky Day, and visitors can see plays, attend lectures, visit exhibitions, watch films and enjoy public readings of the works of the literary genius.
Nekrasov N. A. Russian poet and critic. He had written one of the most known poem about peasants life in Russia at the end of XIX century "For whom in Russia to live well". He wrote many lines about Russian women fortune, poems: "Father Frost, the Red Nose". "Russian Women".
On the Liteinyi Prospekt in Saint Petersburg stands an old three-story house. This house changed many owners during its long standing history and is connected with a name of one of the most well-known Russian poets. Memorial Museum Apartment of N. A. Nekrasov is situated here on the second floor. He lived here since 1857 until the death in 1877. The Nekrasov Memorial Apartment-Museum was established in 1946. The decision to create the museum was taken by the Council of Ministers.
The museum’s exhibition tells us about the life and work of N. A. Nekrasov and his contemporaries. In the museum halls we can see documentary photos and portraits of the poet and his well-known contemporaries, painted by outstanding Russian artists I. Kramskoi, K. Gorbunov.
Today here are also exhibited works by modern Petersburg artists. The museum stores more than 3. 5 thousand items. Do not miss a chance to see it if you come to Saint-Petersburg. You will enjoy the real 19th century atmosphere. Anna Akhmatova was born in Odessa but most of her life she lived in St. Petersburg. Here she met her first love and married Nicolay Gumilev.
In Saint Petersburg you can visit the flat where Russia's greatest poetess lived for almost 30 years. Ten rooms chronologically represent ten eras. Photographs and artefacts from Akhmatova's hard and fascinating life are on display; books of her poetry that never left the printing house and letters from her imprisoned lover. The museum also hosts temporary exhibitions of other artists. Audio-guides in English, German, French, Italian and Finish.
Esenin S.A. (1895-1925) –is a famous Russian lyric poet, master of poetic and vivid landscape descriptions, a man with tragic fortune.
His last poem was written in his own blood. The next day Yesenin hanged himself in the Hotel Angleterre in Saint Petersburg at the age of thirty.
The sculpture done by sculptor Markin A. S. and architects Romanovsky F. K.. Mikhailov S. L. was installed in Tavrichesky Garden on the 3rd of October 1995 and was timed to poet's 1OO-birth Anniversary. The statue carved from white Karelia's marble is placed among Russian birches, all environment creates the mood harmonizing with sitting on the bench poet.