Crime and Punishment: Raskolnikov's St Petersburg

The book opens with a student stepping out of his garret, "under the roof of a high, five-storied house", and walking toward "K. bridge". Dostoevsky gives only "S. Place", but his widow decoded it in 1907 as Stolyarny Lane, and researchers point to the corner house at Stolyarny Lane 5 and Grazhdanskaya Street 19. As in the novel, thirteen steps lead up to the attic, and a bronze-and-granite relief unveiled on 7 July 1999 marks the corner. Treat the match as tradition: researchers admit that many Petersburg houses fit the text.

Location precision: The novel gives only "S. Place"; the pin marks the house researchers connect with Raskolnikov.

Visitor guidance: The courtyard is closed by a grille, but the memorial relief on the corner is visible from the street.

Raskolnikov knows the distance to the pawnbroker's door to the step: "exactly seven hundred and thirty" from his gate. The house is huge, with one side on the canal and the other on a street, and her flat is on the fourth floor. He comes back and kills the old woman and her half-sister Lizaveta, who walks in on the scene. Most researchers place the house at Griboyedov Canal embankment 104, which has the same two courtyards and two gates, but they do not agree on the address.

Location precision: The novel gives no address; the pin marks the house most researchers choose, though others propose different buildings.

Visitor guidance: The house is on city walking tours; view it from the street.

Raskolnikov wanders across Vasilievsky Island, over the Lesser Neva and out toward the islands. At Petrovsky Island he is exhausted, turns off into the bushes and falls asleep. He dreams he is back in his childhood in his native town, where a drunk named Mikolka beats a small mare to death, and the boy sobs: "Why did they... kill... the poor horse!" He wakes asking whether he will really take an axe and strike her on the head. For a moment he is relieved, and prays to renounce that "accursed" dream.

Location precision: The novel says only that he reached Petrovsky Island and turned into the bushes; the pin marks the island.

On the Nikolaevsky Bridge a coachman lashes Raskolnikov across the back with his whip, and a passing woman, taking him for a beggar, thrusts a twenty-copeck coin into his hand. He turns to the Neva and the cathedral cupola glittering in the sun, a view he stopped to look at hundreds of times as a student, and finds it "blank and lifeless". He flings the coin into the water and feels cut off from everyone. The bridge, built in 1843-1850, was renamed Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge in 1918 and Blagoveshchensky Bridge after its reconstruction in 2007.

Visitor guidance: The bridge connects Vasilievsky Island with the central part of the city.

Svidrigailov, who has overheard Raskolnikov's confession to Sonya, crosses the bridge back to the mainland exactly at midnight. For a moment he gazes at the black water of the Little Neva "with a look of special interest, even inquiry". He then walks almost half an hour along an endless street, spends the night in a miserable hotel and next morning dies by suicide in a public place. The novel never names the bridge, but Wikipedia identifies it as the Tuchkov Bridge, which links Vasilievsky and Petrogradsky islands.

Location precision: The novel says only "the bridge" over the Little Neva; Wikipedia identifies the Tuchkov Bridge, which the pin marks.

Visitor guidance: The bridge links Vasilievsky Island and Petrogradsky Island across the Little Neva.

Sennaya Square, the Hay Market, was founded in 1737 as a market for hay, firewood and cattle, and the slums around it are the novel's setting. Sonya had told him to "go to the cross-roads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth". Now he kneels in the middle of the square and kisses "that filthy earth with bliss and rapture". He bows a second time and sees Sonya, who has followed him, standing fifty paces away. The church that stood here was demolished in 1961; a chapel now marks the site.

Visitor guidance: Three metro stations serve the square: Sennaya Ploshchad, Sadovaya and Spasskaya.

Leaving the square, Raskolnikov turns down a street leading to the police office, enters the yard and climbs to the third storey. At the bureau he learns of Svidrigailov's suicide and almost changes his mind. Then he sees Sonya looking at him in despair, and returns to make a full confession. Researchers Antsiferov and Sarukhanyan think the novel means the police office listed at Bolshaya Podyacheskaya 26 in the 1849 city plan and the 1862 address book; others name another address, so treat the pin as a best guess.

Location precision: The novel names neither street nor building; the pin marks the police office researchers found in old city records.