Moscow Square

Moscow Square is at the end of Moscow avenue, the longest in the city (9km long). It was built in the southern suburbs of Saint-Petersburg in the 1950s. At the rear of the square is the impressive building that housed the Soviet of Leningrad. In the centre of the square is a statue of Lenin, dubbed "Lenin dancing." In the area there are many very well-built accommodation buildings from the Soviet time when profits did not govern the rules of construction.

At the end of the avenue is the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad. This powerful and impressive monument was built as the focal point of Ploshchad Pobedy (Victory Square) in the early 1970s to commemorate the heroic efforts of the residents of Leningrad and the soldiers on the Leningrad Front to the repel the Nazis in the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during World War II. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7, which was dedicated to the city of Leningrad and was completed on 27 December 1941, is played as a musical testament to the 25 million Soviet citizens who lost their lives in World War II due to the German invasion.


I took a brief walk in the icy winds to the beach at the back of the Park Inn Hotel. A bleak place in winter looking out over the Gulf of Finland.