📍Kuznechny Lane 5/2, St Petersburg, Russia
1878 – 1881“I grew up in Moscow in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where my father was a doctor; from the window I saw suffering before I understood it. St Petersburg became my city — its garrets, stairwells and feverish back streets are the world of Crime and Punishment. As a young writer I rented rooms in this corner house on Kuznechny Lane for a short time in 1846. Thirty-two years later, after a death sentence commuted at the last moment, years of Siberian exile, gambling debts and grief, I came back to it in October 1878 with my wife Anna and our children. Anna had rescued my finances and my life; she took my dictation in shorthand and managed everything. In my study here, working through the night with strong tea and cigarettes, I wrote The Brothers Karamazov, the novel I had been preparing for all my life. Our daughter Lyubov played with her rocking horse in the nursery next door. Thousands followed my coffin through these streets. The apartment is now the Dostoevsky Literary Memorial Museum.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today