Monument of Russian culture and Russian history. New collection of the Presidential Library marking 300th anniversary of the Nevsky Prospect

The road to the Nevsky Monastery, long-range road, Big Road, future road, Nevsky Prospect, 25 October Avenue - these and many other names at various times referred to the major road of St. Petersburg - Nevsky Prospect.

In 2018, Nevsky Prospect marks its 300th anniversary: ​​in 1718 a clearing was completed, which connected the Admiralty and the Alexander Nevsky Monastery with the Novgorod highway, which placed on the site of the current Ligovsky Prospect. The Presidential Library collection contains noteworthy materials on the history of the emergence, development and arrangement of the main city avenue in the 18th – 20th centuries, which are described in the Nevsky Prospect electronic collection.

The selection includes statutes, literary works, archival and cartographic materials; numerous postcards and photographs with views of the avenue in different years make it possible to turn back time and see familiar places through the eyes of people who lived in the city long before our days.  

"The major one on the Admiralty side, starting from the Admiralty itself and continuing to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, was built in 1713", - reports I. Bozheryanov in the cultural-historical essay Nevsky Prospect (1903), referring to "the first historian of St. Petersburg" Bogdanov. However, it was not a prototype of today's Nevsky Prospect. Evidence of this is the nominal decree of Peter I “On the money collection from passing along the road to the Nevsky Monastery” dated October 2 (13), 1718, which is available on the Presidential Library portal in the rare edition “Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, since 1649” (1830). According to the document, another highway led to the monastery - “for pilgrims and poor passers-by to the monastery, and for the sake of the monastery's daily needs, the road impassable for six hundred fathoms laid and managed, without occupying the big river along the Neva River”, that is, it was shorter and more convenient. By this decree it was forbidden “those having no rank should not drive along this newly built road, as a result it harms the road. And if someone wants to follow this road, should pay for its maintenance”.  

“The city rebuilt quickly. Foreigners were already enchanted by the beauty of Nevsky Prospect, a long and wide avenue paved with stone, with groves and lawns on the sides; the captured Swedes laid the prospectus, and they cleaned it every Saturday” - these words of the historian S. M. Solovyov are also given in the Nevsky Prospect edition.

Many interesting facts are available in the two-volume book - for example, the Summer Garden went far beyond its present borders and “then stretched along the Fontanka, which first bore the name of Nameless Erik, to the present Anichkin bridge <...> and along the Nevsky Garden stretched to the Deaf Canal or the current Yekaterininsky Bridge channel".

Thus, initially across the Fontanka River “a narrow bridge was built, which had no name, and received its name from the settlement of Anichkova, named after the commander of the Astrakhan Infantry Regiment, located in it. In 1737, Anichkovsky Bridge was extended to the whole passage. In 1736, at the entrance to the Anichkovsky Bridge, a triumphal gate was built. <...> In 1744, they made it lift among the Anichkovsky Bridge. <...> In 1747, the width was again reduced, and in this form the old bridge was broken, when Catherine II built the “Big Stone Bridge” in 1769, with pavilions and a wooden floor in the middle for the passage of ships. Subsequently, with the shallowing of the Fontanka, besides barges, other vessels stopped walking on it, and the lifting of the middle of the bridge, like unnecessary, was destroyed”.

A certain section of the Presidential Library’s electronic collection is dedicated to building and arranging Nevsky Prospect. Here is the plan of the highway in 1795, the pavement plan of 1826, plans and drawings of buildings that adorn the avenue to this day, such as the Mertens House, as well as many other materials telling a long history of transformation, thanks to which the views of Nevsky Prospect are recognizable throughout the world.

“Walking” along Nevsky Prospect, looking at buildings, signs, pedestrians, and also see the most important historical events that once took place in the city center, today is possible thanks to numerous photographs from the Presidential Library. In addition, here you can "look through" catalogs of postcards with urban views. For example, in the Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad edition, cards covering the period from 1859 to 1917 are presented.

According to Y. O. Rubanchik in the work “Nevsky Prospect”, “together with Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad the Nevsky Prospect entered the history of our country, it became the national pride of the Russian people as evidence of the remarkable talents of the people, its urban-planning culture, talents and mastery of his architects, his tireless movement towards progress, to the heights of human culture".

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol said about Nevsky Prospect: “There is nothing better than Nevsky Prospect, at least in Petersburg; it is everything for the city” and few people would dare to argue with the great Russian writer.