Улица Репина

✔️Map: https://goo.gl/maps/7mYcJuGZnriV1JZg9 A spectator familiar with the structure of the streets of Vasilyevsky Island may be surprised at the perfidious intrusion of some lane into the ideal geometric shapes drawn on the map of St. Petersburg. The island is divided by lines into even pieces. It is not surprising, because according to the Amsterdam example, channels were dug here, which were later filled up in connection with a failed idea, but the geometric streets remained. But if you look closely at the plan, you can see a rather narrow lane that does not fit into the ideal geometry. This street appeared spontaneously and was not even planned according to all urban planning plans. This path did not even have a name for a long time. True, then the residents called this street Pesochny Lane. This is how the narrowest street appeared in the city, and if for old European cities this is quite a common thing, then for St. Petersburg, which is famous for its wide avenues, this is nonsense. Only five meters wide! Although for the Italian Positano it would be a wide highway. Our lane gradually got used to the city and changed names, turning first into Solovyevsky, and after the war transformed into Repin Street. The street hid behind the facades of noisy streets - lines, and it was this fact that played a cruel joke on it, turning it into the center of a terrible story. The alley itself is not at all to blame for this, but it was during World War II that the hidden location of the alley began to be used for storing corpses. At first, the bodies were laid out in even piles, and then, when the precious space became less and less, they were already dumped in bulk. The crematoria could not cope with the increased workload, and the narrow street of the city turned into a large open-air mortuary. It should be noted that the bodies of far from the entire city were stored in this place, but only of the immediate environs. The current Victory Park has the same glory of black places, where the ashes left after the burning of people were dumped by trucks into local ponds. Local residents say that strange sounds, rustles and screams are heard at night, and some even see strange moving light spots on the walls of houses. The street looks cozy, but dilapidated, like scenery descended from Italian postcards, which is why domestic filmmakers liked it so much. The appearance of Repin Street can be seen in more than twenty films. As the enthusiasts who planned to turn it into a monument to cinematography said: Repin Street is the bearer of the image of “non-ceremonial St. Petersburg”. The facades facing this street are no less valuable than those facing the busier lines of Vasilyevsky Island. By the way, on April 18, 2016, the inhabitants of the most terrible street in the history of the city decided to dispel the negative background and got hooked on the project to transform the attraction by arranging a “Live Street” flash mob. They went out into the fresh air from their apartments and stood near the houses on Repin Street with home-made posters telling about famous people - artists, writers and architects who lived in them. I think that almost every resident of besieged Leningrad dreamed that the street of "tragedies" would someday live its quiet life, turning into the most ordinary street in our city. Peaceful sky above your head and do not forget the price our ancestors paid for it.