St. Petersburg Sights

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1. Piskaryevskoye Cemetery

The extent of the city's suffering during the 900-day siege by the Nazis between 1941 and 1944 becomes clear on a visit to this sobering place in the northeastern outskirts of the city, used as a mass burial ground for 500,000 World War II victims. The numbingly endless rows of common graves carry simple slabs indicating the year in which those below them died, some from shelling, but most from cold and starvation. Memorial monuments and an eternal flame commemorate the dead, but most moving of all is an inscription on the granite wall at the far end of the cemetery: a famous poem by radio personality Olga Bergholts ends with the oft-repeated phrase, "No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten." The granite pavilions at the entrance house a small museum with photographs and memoirs documenting the siege. (Start with the one on the right side; the pavilions are open until 5 and admission is free.) On display is Tanya Savicheva's "diary," scraps of paper on which the young schoolgirl recorded the death of every member of her family. The last entry reads, "May 13. Mother died. Everyone is dead. Only I am left." (She, too, died as a result of the war.) To reach the cemetery go to Ploshchad Muzhestva metro station, then take a public bus 123 or 178 up Nepokoryonnykh prospekt to the stop marked "Piskaryovskoye Kladbische."