Dostoevsky's Petersburg: follow the footsteps of Raskolnikov

Dostoevsky's Petersburg isn't beautiful. It is diversified and ugly. Do you really want to feel that yellow smell? Inner personal tragedies brought to the crowdie city streets, where Sonya Marmeladova fell on a sward, where her father died. Katerina Ivanovna was bleeding to death on a pavement. Here Raskolnokov had tried to repent in front of the crowd. Obscure street thoughts had the influence on Raskolnikov. He saw the sights: a girl, teared to pieces, he was watching after a young woman rushed to the canal from the bridge. At the same time Petersburg’s ceremonial magnificence with all his castles and bridges were unfamiliar to Raskolnikov. He saw bridges and the river on his way to the University “The inexplicable cold always was blowing at him from this magnificent panorama”. Dostoevsky's work begins as a natural development of the St. Petersburg myth and is no less connected with the "Petersburg space" than Pushkin's Bronze Horseman. Dostoevsky’s Peterburg – it is the city of the street girls, lazars, homeless children, regular customers of taverns, that are trying to find the oblivion in vine just for a short time/ The atmosphere of this Petersburg is the atmosphere of gridlocks and hopelessness We start our tour at Vladimirskaya Metro Station, next to which we find a statue of our great writer, Passing the Kuznechny Market on our right (it's worth taking a glance inside to catch a faint echo of the market atmosphere that pervades Crime and Punishment) we immediately reach the Dostoevsky Memorial Museum at 5/2 Kuznechny Pereulok. After absorbing all that the museum has to offer, let's retrace our steps back down Kuznechny Lane and take a quick peek in the Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God. And than to Spasskaya - the last stop on the orange line, and follow the exit signs to the Sennaya Ploshchad, that is, to Hay Market Square. Thus, we emerge blinking into the central setting of Crime and Punishment.