Petersburg discoveries: from Sportivnaya to Chkalovskaya

What can you expect?

The route starts from Sportivnaya metro station. If you are traveling from Vasilyevsky Island, you will have the opportunity to ride on a travelator - a horizontal escalator under Malaya Neva along the Tuchkova bridge route.

You come to the surface. Behind you is the Yubileiny sports complex, where the largest indoor ice rink in St. Petersburg is open all year round, and on the right is the Prince Vladimir Cathedral, the magnificent creation of Antonio Rinaldi, a monument of Russian church architecture from Catherine’s times.

An underpass will lead you to the chapel in the name of St. Alexander Nevsky, built in memory of Emperor Alexander II. Cross Bolshoy Prospect of the Petrograd Side and move towards the Small Prospect. And there, in house 1B you will find one of the most famous St. Petersburg courtyards-wells. It is of a regular octagonal shape, and in the middle of the courtyard a cast-iron tree “grows”, which leaves fulfill the wishes of travelers.

Nearby, on the same Small Avenue, there is a two-story mansion with the mysterious word "Kopec" on the facade. Do not be alarmed - this is not a gloomy prophecy, but the name of the former owner of the house, the wife of a state councilor ...

To the right of the mansion begins a courtyard leading onto Bolshoy Prospect. In this courtyard there is a craft coffee house “Bob and Leaf”, where they pour not only coffee and tea, but also “spirit-lifting ales”. And if you are hungry, then you can have lunch at the corner of Bolshoi Prospekt and Zverinskaya Street in the restaurant “On Steam”, where healthy steamed dishes are prepared.

On the opposite side of Zverinskaya there is a six-story house with a semicircular corner facade - Chubakov's apartment building. Before the war, the poet Nikolai Tikhonov lived here, visiting Mayakovsky, Kaverin, Olga Berggolz and other famous writers.

The next interesting building is at the beginning of Syezdinskaya street. A brick house resembling a medieval castle in miniature was built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries for Wilhelm Tees, co-owner of the Bush, Tees and Kᵒ wool factory.

An even more interesting story can be told by an inconspicuous building opposite. The former exit building of the Petersburg part, where the police station and fire brigade were located, is the very first stone building on Bolshoi Prospekt.That was it that gave the name to Syezhinskaya Street, and it was here that Svidrigailov shot himself in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."

Cross Bolshoy Avenue, go up to the 4th floor of the Kolobov brothers' house and ask the library staff for permission to go out onto the balcony. You will not be refused, and you can admire the view of the Petrograd side. The library is closed on Sundays. But on weekends in the same house opened an unusual Dream Museum of Sigmund Freud.

Cross Bolshoy Prospect again and turn onto Pionerskaya Street. Here you can look into the Children's Museum of Postcards and the art gallery of the philokartist Vitaly Tretyakov, and then continue on Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street.

If you want to buy souvenirs or gifts, you will not find a better store than in the Easy-Easy charity space. Here all things are unique, and by purchasing them, you help the AdVita Foundation wards - children and adults with cancer. In the same building 10 is the art gallery "Attic of artists", where interesting exhibitions are held.

Further along Bolshaya Pushkarskaya - a place where the 19th century argues loudly with the 21st century. Greff's romantic wooden mansion, Dobbert, is located on one small site (pay attention to the tower decorated with a wrought-iron web) and the ultramodern building of Boris Eifman’s Dance Academy.

Take a breath on a bench in Pushkarsky garden. Here, at the wall of the house on the corner of Voskov Street, there is an amazing place where a miracle once happened - wooden walkways, and above them there is an inscription “The Place of Appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary 1890.” According to legend, it was here that the 13-year-old boy, dying from an incurable disease, the Virgin Mary appeared and healed him. A chapel was erected in memory of this miracle.

And again you return to Bolshoy Avenue. It is impossible to walk past a massive gray building decorated with sculptures of owls and other birds. The profitable house of the merchant Traveler Putilova is the pearl of Northern Art Nouveau, and the author of the masterpiece is the architect and ideologist of this style Ippolit Alexandrovich Pretro.

Your path lies along Oranienbaumskaya Street to the Chkalovskaya metro station. If you are determined to make a halt, then at the corner of Maly Prospect you will find Brasseria Kriek, a Belgian restaurant with a large selection of cherry and other beers. And from there - through courtyards from Oranienbaumskaya street to Kolpinskaya - you will quickly get to the metro station.

(The author of the title photo is Roman Vezenin: https://vezenin.livejournal.com/435752.html)