St. Petersburg has served as a source of inspiration for many great writers, and Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is one of them. He found himself in the northern capital at a young age and fell in love with the city so much that he remained faithful to it until the end of his life.
Main Engineering School
Address: Sadovaya str., 2
Young Fyodor dreamed of studying literature, but his father considered writing a frivolous profession that would not be able to provide for his son in adulthood. Therefore, the future writer was forced to enroll in an engineering school and comprehend military affairs.
The Mikhailovsky or Engineering Castle became both a home and a prison for Dostoevsky for several years. However, here Fyodor Mikhailovich began to get acquainted with the creative life of St. Petersburg.
Kotomin 's House
Address: Nevsky Prospekt, 18
At the time of Dostoevsky, the confectionery in the house of the merchant Kotomin was a very popular place among the creative intelligentsia. Pushkin, Lermontov and Chernyshevsky met here. From here, Alexander Sergeevich went to the fatal duel, and Mikhail Yurievich later read his famous poem “To the Death of a poet.”
Here Dostoevsky met Mikhail Petrashevsky, the main revolutionary and the number one enemy for the current government. The writer actively attended meetings of Petrashevites and sympathized with their ideas*, because of which he was sentenced to death.
Fyodor Mikhailovich miraculously managed to escape execution, and the world did not lose the great writer.
* Like many other political and public organizations of that time, the Petrashevites fought censorship, wanted to change the judicial system and achieve the liberation of the peasants.
Dostoevsky Museum
Address: Kuznechny Lane, 5/2
Having changed many places of residence, Dostoevsky spent the last years in this apartment on Kuznechny Lane. Here he wrote The Brothers Karamazov, and the novel gave him another burst of lifetime fame.
Nowadays, the apartment has been converted into a museum of the writer's life and work. In two exhibition halls, you will be told about the fascinating fate of Dostoevsky, about the writer's novels, which are still read all over the world.
The writer spent his youth and adult life in St. Petersburg. Here he created his famous novels and seriously influenced Russian literature. Therefore, if you come to the northern capital, be sure to walk with a guide to places associated with Dostoevsky. Take a look at the Haymarket Square, which is often mentioned in the novel “Crime and punishment”, then go to the house of the old woman-interest-taker and Sonya Marmeladova on the embankment of the Griboyedov Canal. Moreover, they can be reached on foot from the Express Sadovaya Hotel.
Book a cozy room at the Express Sadovaya Hotel and spend your vacation in the historic district of St. Petersburg, where Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Lermontov once lived and worked.