Bygone Petersburg: Prose of Everyday Life and Poetry of Celebration

Festive celebrations and the routes of Dostoevsky's heroes, Petersburg summer houses, tavern establishments and small shops, street signs, merchant houses and artists' studios, sounds and sights… This book — a collection of works about the daily life of old Petersburg, written by the renowned cultural historian and literary scholar Albin Konechny. The reader will learn what place the Neva and the white nights held in the lives of Petersburg residents; how the townspeople spent their leisure time and entertained themselves; how the lives of merchants and painters were organized; whether the addresses of the heroes of "Crime and Punishment" existed, and whether it is worth continuing their search. Many newspaper publications, memoirs, and documents that became sources for these studies are introduced by the author for the first time. A special section is dedicated to Petersburg scholars of the past: from Faddey Bulgarin, who painted a true panorama of the capital as it was in his essays, to the society "Old Petersburg," which preserved the city’s heritage in the years when its memory was under threat.