Unusual St Petersburg | Street art | Vertical Lennon Street | Пушкинская 10 • Улица Леннона • Питер

In the centre of St Petersburg, right next to the train station, look out for the alternative crowd and follow them into the cultural underground.

📍53 Ligovsky Ave, Saint Petersburg, Russia
❇️ Instagram: @pushkinskaya10

Hidden in the mind boggling network of the St Petersburg's courtyards, lie unexpected masterstrokes. Or master "sprays". Just pop into a random courtyard and see what find.

But the core is Pushkinskaya, 10. Here, in 1989 the contemporary artists and musicians of St Petersburg held fort against Soviet standardisation.

Founding the Free Culture Foundation, they defended their right to create new forms of expression, eventually turning the courtyard into an official Center of Contemporary Art.

It all started with Nikolai Vasin - a fan of the Beatles and the only legal owner of John Lennon's autographed album in the USSR. Lennon sent him the disc in response to fanmail.

Encouraged, Vasin began a fight with the city authorities for the right to live on Lennon Street. Blocked at every turn, he turned the courtyard of his own house into a vertical street, bypassing city laws.

Other artists came to help decorate the street. Today, the intriguing courtyard hosts 14 art galleries, a concert venue, two music clubs, a recording studio, a children's theater, 38 creative workshops and unusual museums - of "unofficial" art of the second half of the 20th century and contemporary Russian art, and a Museum of Sound.

Installations start right on the stairs and in the corridors of the Houses.

Come visit. And travel more, it's good for the soul.

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