Found art: graffiti, street messages, sculptures, stonewares and dovecotes

Greetings, friends!
Today will be a very long story and a lot of photos. First we'll take a look at a few neighboring courtyards in the central part of the city, and then we'll move to the area of new buildings and continue our search for hidden art in the courtyards of high-rise buildings. I finished the walk already at dusk, and the final photos turned out a bit dark. But it was at the end of the walk that I came across several objects, the existence of which in the modern city was a complete surprise to me.

To begin with, I decided to take a little walk along the street named in honor of the romantic poet Zhukovsky. The years of his life and work fall on the end of XVIII - beginning of XIX centuries. This street is located in one of the central districts of the city. I decided that I would walk down the street and turn into all available yards in search of graffiti and other street art. Luck smiled on me almost immediately. I walked into a courtyard and saw a huge mural on the blank wall of a building.

Apparently, the painting on the wall of the building is based on an episode from Alexander Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Lyudmila. As a source of inspiration for writing this poem, the author used both ancient folk bylinas and literary fairy tales of his contemporaries. In some stanzas there are hints of one of Zhukovsky's ballads. At the back of the courtyard there is a wooden sculpture, which is also a fairy-tale character.

I walked a little further and read several messages addressed to random passers-by. "St. Petersburg courtyard: sullen, accustomed," reads one of the inscriptions. "It has its own vibe," replies another.

But the most interesting find was waiting for me in the next courtyard. In this courtyard there is a real exhibition, the walls of the buildings are decorated with ceramic panels. The authors of these works are Valery Ivanov, Sergey Varagzin and students of the Stieglitz Academy of Art and Industry.

In the next courtyard there was not such a variety of art objects, there I met only one drawing, but very heartfelt. I couldn't understand what the inscription next to it meant.

Next, we had to go to the new building district. I came to this area by subway, but you can be transported instantly. This neighborhood was built up in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

One of the walls of a high-rise building became a canvas for the embodiment of a fairy tale plot. In a neighboring courtyard lives a scholarly cat - the hero of one of Alexander Pushkin's poetic fairy tales. The cat is reading a book, and I came closer to read the lines: "happiness is where you are".

After the communication with the scholar cat, I looked around and noticed a few strange structures in the distance that looked like barns or garages. Some of them were decorated with simple drawings, and I walked closer, hoping to see some interesting artwork, as well as to figure out the purpose of these structures. I walked around a few times - and suddenly I guessed what they were. I probably would have figured it out faster if I could have expected to encounter something like this in a densely populated urban area. The old dovecotes were empty, but perhaps the pigeons had simply moved to warmer quarters for the winter.

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Smartphone	Google Pixel 3a
Location	Saint Petersburg, Russia