On the right you can see the St. Petersburg State Conservatory named after N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov.
It was founded in 1862. The main initiator of the creation of the conservatory and its first artistic director was Anton Rubinstein, who also became the first professor in the piano class. Among the teachers who taught at the Conservatory in the first years of its existence were Anton Rubinstein, Theodor Leshetitsky (piano), Henryk Wieniawski, Karl Davydov (cello) and other outstanding musicians.
The first graduate of the Conservatory in the composition class was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who graduated from it in 1865 with a large silver medal.
The outstanding Russian composer Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), who had an exceptional influence on all aspects of the conservatory's life, played a huge role in the formation of professional compositional and theoretical education. Rimsky-Korsakov is the author of the first educational programs and textbooks on harmony and the theory of composition, which have not lost their relevance to the present day. During the years of teaching, Rimsky-Korsakov brought up many outstanding musicians, some of whom, like Anatoly Lyadov and Maximilian Steinberg, later became professors of the Conservatory themselves.
On the place of the Concervatory there used to stand the first Kamenny theatre. A lot of famous perfomances and operas were staged there including "The Life of the Tsar" by the outstanding composer M. Glinka, whose monument stands to the right of the conservatory.