The present aspect of the city, its streets and squares, vas certainly not created overnight. The well-known architectural historian Andrey Punin considers that the architecture of the centre of the city acquired its present harmonious completeness and proportions only by 1830, and that it required the efforts of more than one generation of architects and builders.
The city was built on a grand scale. Look at the map of Petersburg and you will see none of the narrow winding streets found in so many European cities. “... I love your austere and graceful look." wrote Pushkin in his poem “Copper Rider"*. Along with its spaciousness, this austerity and grace remain the principal and most characteristic features of Petersburg.
This is why the citizen of Petersburg feels confined when in other cities. He misses the spaciousness. Petersburg is not only a gateway to the sea and the wide and deep Neva, but it also has huge squares and straight, broad streets.
The first streets of Petersburg were woodland paths and roads going through swampy and boggy marshlands. Even the famous Nevsky Prospekt. which later became the main street of Petersburg, was at first only a path connecting the Admiralty Docks with the road to Moscow.
Nevsky Prospekt is the central thoroughfare of Petersburg. It is 4.5km long and 25 to 60m wide. Beginning in the early 18th century as a road through a swampy wood, it was known as the Grand Straight Road and was the main entrance to the city. Between 1721 and 1724 the land around it was drained and partially paved with stone, while birch trees were planted along the borders. In 1730 it received the name of Nevsky Road. Since 1766 only stone houses have been built there. In the late 18th century many great buildings were built on Nevsky: the palaces of Anichkov and of Stroganov. St. Catherines Catholic Church and even Gostiny Dvor. the house of Knyaginya Usupova (now the Palace of Art-Workers). In the early 19th century the Public Library appeared, the Kazan Cathedral, the State Duma building and the palace of the Beloselskiys-Belozerskiys.
The modern Nevsky Prospekt is the focal point of cultural and social life in the city. Here or nearby there are major museums, exhibition halls, theatres and hotels, and plenty of shops, restaurants and coffee bars. There are five underground stations on the Nevsky Prospekt: Nevsky Prospekt, Gostiny Dvor. Mayakovskaya, Ploschad Vosstaniya and Ploschad Alexandra Nevskogo.
The architects, who created and made famous the special Petersburg style, still work in their own manner. The streets and squares of our city do not resemble one another. Magnificent and splendid. Nevsky is next to Sadovaya Street, which since the 18th century has been one of the main trading streets of the city: this is when the Nikolsky Market and Gostiny Dvor were built. Single ensembles, such as Senatskaya Square (Dekabristov Square), the Alexandrinsky Theatre and the Marsovo Field look nothing like, for example, Teatralnaya Square, or the streets on which houses were subsequently built.
Still, the streets and squares of our city, as well as the embankments, are in themselves architectural, cultural and historical memorials. They create the unique appearance of the city, which has been called a museum under an open sky.