A Tour Of Leningrad Under The Siege

St Petersburg will always remember the Siege (8 September 1941-27 January 1944) as it was one of the most devastating events that the city suffered. It was a uniting tragedy that will be remembered by generations to come. Although there are museums and monuments dedicated to the history of the Siege, some lesser-known places also hold memories of the events of the Siege. Here’s an important list of the small memorials around the city that help visitors envision life during those arduous 900 days.

1. The Apartment of Tanya Savicheva

Apartment

Tanya was a young schoolgirl when the war started. Her family lived in an apartment on the 13, 2nd Line of the Vasilievsky Island. As the siege started Tanya began writing a diary in an old notebook that she found in her sister’s belongings. The book only contained nine pages, six of which document the deaths of her close relatives. In the first year of the siege, almost all of Tanya’s family died and she was evacuated, only to die a few months later, due to health complications. Tanya’s diary was found by her sister Nina who retained it, making it a symbol of the Siege of Leningrad. Although the Savichev apartment never became a museum, there is a plaque outside to mark the place of their home.

Water wells

An unusually located memorial has been placed at the bottom of the steps leading down to the Fontanka River, just in front of 21 Fontanka Embankment. There was an ice hole here made in the frozen river that was used as a source of water during the winter. Another such memorial is located at 6 Nepokoryonnykh Prospekt, where a plaque depicts a woman holding a child and a bucket. Here was a well that acted as one of the few sources of water after the pipes all stopped working.

Water Source Memorial, 21 Fontanka Embankment, St Petersburg, Russia

Well Memorial, 6 Nepokoryonnykh Prospekt, St Petersburg, Russia

2. Piskarevskoe Memorial Cemetery

Cemetery, Memorial

Founded in 1939, during the war the Piskarevskoe Cemetery became a place of mass burial, housing those who died in the besieged city as well as soldiers fighting on the Leningrad front. Over the four years of war, almost half a million citizens of Leningrad were buried here. Now the cemetery is a memorial. To honour the memory of the victims of war, there is an eternal flame burning and a statue of a woman holding a wreath of oak leaves. Behind her is a plaque with a poem of wartime poet Olga Bergholtz.