Petrovsky Boulevard, (russian: Петровский Бульвар), is a major boulevard in Moscow. It begins at the Petrovka Street and Strastnoy Boulevard. The boulevard ends at Tsvetnoy Boulevard in the same district, although east of Tsvetnoy Boulevard, it becomes Christmas Boulevard, where it heads to Clean Ponds. The Petrovsky Boulevard is a part of the Boulevard Ring.
Petrovsky Boulevard is named after the Petrovsky Monastery. In the late 18th century in the house at Nos. 6-8 there lived a rich grandee, R. Tatishchev, and he was favoured with the attention of the Emperor Paul I who attended a ball at his house. Tatishchev was the grandson of V. Tatishchev, the first Russian historian, who had fought in the Battle of Poltava.
The boulevard continues down a gentle slope to Trubnaya Square. Here, in the wall of the White City there was an opening covered by a metal grating, (truba, a 'pipe'), through which the river Neglinka trickled. In the 1820s the square took its name from the pipe, and became known colloquially as Truba.
Moscow's first pet market was located here, and each spring on the festival of the Annunciation, goldfinches, siskins and chaffinches would be set free.
The house at Nos. 12-14 at the junction with Neglinnaya Street is now used by the theatre 'School of Modern Drama'. In the last century it was the site of a famous restaurant, 'The Hermitage', which belonged to the merchant Yakov Pegov and the French chef Lucien Olivier. It was Olivier who devised the salad which bears his name and became very popular in Russia. The two men had become acquainted by chance near Trubnaya Square, when they had both come to buy the refined Bergamot tobacco. They decided to buy up the landat the junction of the square and the boulevard so that they could open a French restaurant. In 1864 the architect D. Chichagov rebuilt the house and the 'Hermitage' threw open its doors to a welcoming public.
The restaurant specialised in French cuisine, and at the sumptuous dinners expensive wines would be served with the assurance that they were in fact genuine brandy from the cellars of Ludwig XVI's palace, which had survived the revolution. Olivier observed the Moscow traditions, and his clients were not seized by stern flunkeys in morning dress, but by waiters dressed in shirts made of the finest Dutch linen tied with silk belts.
The 'Hermitage' was much appreciated by the Muscovite intelligentsia, and it became a place for festive occasions and dinners. In 1877 Chaikovsky celebrated his wedding here. Celebratory dinners were held here in honour of Turgenev on 6 March 1879, and in honour of Dostoyevskyn in 1880. In 1902 Gorky invited all the cast to a dinner here after the premiere of his play Down and out.
From the 1870s the 'Hermitage' had a tradition which made it renowned throughout Moscow. Every year on 25 (12) January the silk furnishings were replaced by wooden tables and stools, the carpets were taken up and the floors dusted down with sawdust, and until early morning Moscow's student community celebrated their favourite holiday - Tatyana's Day:
Long life Tatyana, Tatyana, Tatyana!
All our members are drunk, quite drunk
For glorious Tatyana's Day...
The students would gather here after the official part of the holiday in the university building on Mokhovaya Street. On this day the local policemen were instructed not to take the tipsy students down to the station because of the well-known fact that 'on Tatyana's Day students get drunk'.
