Nevsky Prospect is the chief artery of St. Petersburg, a straight, broad avenue that bisects the city and runs from the Admiralty Spire and the Winter Palace to god only knows where. On Nevsky Prospect one encounters: Strogonov Palace, Anchikov Palace, Kazan Cathedral, the Moyka and Griboedov and Fontanka canals, bridges, parks, Russian and American fast food joints, open air dining, shopping malls (Gostiny Dvor), metro stations, museums, souvenir shops, pickpockets, street performers, etc.
To talk down Nevsky Prospect is to have something akin to a religious experience. At some point, all of the following must have strolled this same street: Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Grigori Orlov, Potemkin, Alexander I, Nicholas II, Alexander III, Nicholas II, Rasputin, Aleksandr Pushkin, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Kuzmin, Fydor Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Aleksander, Aleksander Blok, N.V. Gogol, Osip Mandelshtam, Isadora Duncan, Sergei Esenin, Prokofiev, Vladimir Mayakovski, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Shostokovich, Igor Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Peter Karl Faberge, Kerensky,Feliks Dzerzhinsky, V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Kamanev, Zinoviev, Rinaldi, Rossi, Falconet, Rastrelli, Trezzini, Diagilev, Benois, Andrei Bely, Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Repin, Nikolai Berdaev, Soloviev, Viacheslav Ivanov, Anastasia Verbitskaya, Alexei Tolstoy, Boris Eikhenbaum, Putilov, Olga Berrgolts, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Zhadanov, Yury Lotman, Vladimir Nabokov, Miulikov, Vera Figner, Antsiferov, Victor Schlovsky, Maxim Gorky, Antsiferov, Plekhanov, Ginzburg, Axelrod, Ilya Ehrenburg, Khodasevich, Kornei Chukovsky, Father Gapon, Kroptkin, Herzen, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Joseph Brodsky, Nikolai Tikhonov, Panin, Stroganov, Iusupov, Sergei Esenin, George Balanchine, Lunacharsky, Chernychevsky, Volkov, Mirsky, Aleksander Fadeev, Pavlov, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Briusov, Ivan Bunin, et cetera and so on.
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