The courtyard-well — dvor-kolodets — is a genre St Petersburg perfected: you step through an archway off a grand street, look up, and the walls close into a stone well with a square of sky at the bottom. This is the inner lining of the tenement city, and it's more honest than the facades. Here's where the wells came from, how to hunt for them — and why internet lists of "open addresses" go stale faster than they're printed.
Where the wells came from
The economics of a tenement house were simple: land in the centre was expensive, so buildings went up along the entire perimeter of the plot, wall to wall with their neighbours, leaving a minimal light-well inside. The more profitable the district, the deeper and tighter the wells. Some houses chain their courtyards: archway, courtyard, another archway, another courtyard — five or six links deep into the block. For anyone who's outgrown facades, this is the city's best walk.
How to hunt (worth more than any address list)
- walk through archways. The rule is simple: see an archway without a barrier — look in. Open through-courtyards still exist in every block of the old centre;
- the best hunting grounds are Vladimirsky and Zagorodny Prospekts, the streets around Five Corners, the lines of Vasilyevsky Island and the Petrograd Side — courtyard density there is at its highest;
- look up and look down: a well only reveals itself to a tilted head, and the cobbles and old manhole covers in courtyards are sometimes older than the buildings;
- why we don't publish "five reliable addresses": courtyards get closed by residents' decision, and an intercom appears overnight. Any specific list is half-stale within a season — the hunting skill outlives the coordinates;
- a guide is the surest way: local courtyard-and-stairwell walking tours follow routes where access is agreed — the way to see the famous "polygonal" courtyards without loitering by an intercom.
Courtyard etiquette
- a courtyard is an extension of someone's home: quiet voices, no music, no cigarette butts, no climbing;
- a locked door is an answer, not a challenge: don't wait by the intercom or slip in behind residents;
- photograph the courtyards freely; people in windows and on benches — only after asking;
- wells go dark earlier than the streets — the best light and the best mood here are in daytime.
Where it fits in a trip
Courtyard-hunting is the perfect connective tissue between the big items of a St Petersburg itinerary: half an hour of archway exploration between a museum and lunch gives the city a depth no palace can. And if the city's inner lining hooks you, the theme continues in our piece on St Petersburg's communal apartments — the same world, seen from the other side of the front door.
The wells are the city's free, endless and most underrated sight. All you need is curiosity, politeness and the habit of looking up in archways.
