Author: Lucy Harnish

Top 10 Bookstores in St. Petersburg

Bookstores in St. Petersburg are numberous and diverse. The city has a prominent literary history and bears associations with Russian literary giants such as Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoyevsky. It makes sense, then, that it is also bursting at the seams with both hip and traditional bookstores. After spending a semester here as a literature major, […]

St Petersburg’s 10 Most Artistic Coffee Shops and Cafes

In the last few years, coffee culture has exploded across Russia, with new, local coffee shops popping up everywhere from Moscow to Vladivostok. However, perhaps the hippest and most intellectual take on coffee culture can be found in St. Petersburg, a city that stands apart in its reverence for art and culture. Here are ten […]

Loft Project Etagi: A Modern Art Community in St. Petersburg

The Loft Project Etagi (Этажи) is a creative space affectionately known as “the loft” by those who frequent it. A community-driven project to develop modern art in St. Petersburg, it has a nuanced history that reflects Russia’s transition from communism to a market economy and represents Russians’ desire to contribute to the development of their […]

10 Must-See Literary Museums in St Petersburg

Around any given corner in St Petersburg one can expect to find a museum that reflects the city’s unique cultural history. In particular, St Petersburg has a wide array of literary house museums – museums that detail the life of an author inside an actual former home of that author. These are particularly interesting in […]

Yevgeni Grishkovetz: One Man’s Voice

Yevgeni Grishkovetz is a Russian born novelist, playwright, musician, and actor. He is best known for his theatrical work, particularly with the Theatre of Modern Song in Moscow, where many of works have been staged. His writing and performing are known for their insightful nature. He strives to show how experiences are often universal. Often […]

The Shadow Museum in St. Petersburg

Although The Shadow Museum is centrally located it is somewhat difficult to find as it is tucked within a gated courtyard (of which St. Petersburg has many). Once you find it, however, it is worth the searching as it offers a fun, interactive, and interpretive experience that tells a short history of St Petersburg through […]

The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg

The State Russian Museum holds the world’s largest collection of Russian art. The approximately 110,000 square feet of the museum’s primary exhibition space are structured to give the visitor a basic overview of how art has grown and developed specifically in Russia. Several auxiliary spaces are used to show everything from folk art to modern […]

The Alexander Blok Apartment Museum

Alexander Blok’s former apartment is now part of a two-floor museum complex. Blok was one of Russia’s primer Silver Age poets, and his museum shows not only how he worked, but also gives some indication of the emotionally extreme but also socially well-connected life he led. The museum is located in the historic Kolomna district […]

The Literary Museum of the Institute of Russian Literature (The Pushkin House)

The Literary Museum of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences is often just called “The Pushkin House” for short. It provides, essentially, an overview course on Russian canonical writers from the Golden Age through the end of Russia’s Silver Age. It achieves this by displaying original manuscripts and personal belongings […]

Alexander Nevsky Lavra Cemeteries

St. Petersburg abounds in museums, historic sites, and places that appear in Russian literature. At the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, there is one more unique way to experience history – by visiting the final resting place of some of the city’s greatest names. Located next to the monastery are four cemeteries – Lezarevskoe, Tikhvinskoe, Nikolskoe, and […]

Vladimir Sharov: Literature That Shines a Light on Dark History

Vladimir Sharov was a Russian writer who was deeply interested in the legacy of Russia’s Communist history. His nine novels focus on various aspects of this history: the communist schisms, Bolshevism, Stalin’s Terror, and the USSR’s collapse, and often mixes or juxtaposes ideas from Communism and religion. Russia’s Soviet history was deeply personal to Sharov, […]

The Memorial Museum-Apartment of Nikolai Nekrasov

Nikolai Nekrasov is one of Russia’s most famous poets and literary thinkers. While he is not as recognized abroad as some of his contemporaries like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev, Nekrasov was a great influence on their careers as well as to as to the intellectual thought of the time that affected many of these great […]

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