Citizens! During shelling this side of the street is the most dangerous

Pri artobstrele eta storona ulitsy naiboleye opasna) was a public warning message that appeared on the streets of Leningrad during the siege of the city in the Second World War.

The warnings were stencilled on the sides of streets where passers-by were most vulnerable from artillery shells fired from German positions to the south of the city.

With the final lifting of the siege in 1944 and the retreat of the Germans, the danger from artillery bombardment passed and the warning signs were removed from the walls.

Poet Mikhail Dudin made reference to them in his poems, and spearheaded an initiative to have the sign recreated on a building on Nevsky Prospect.

Finnish forces reached the Svir River, some 160 kilometres north-east of the city, but resisted pressure from the Germans to advance further, and did little more than maintain their lines during the years of the siege.

[3] The stencilled inscriptions appeared on the northern and north-eastern sides of the streets, as the city was bombarded by long range German artillery from the Pulkovo Heights to the south, and the region of Strelna to the south-west.

[6] The inscriptions on the northern side of Nevsky Prospekt were made by three members of the local anti-aircraft defence organisation (MPVO [ru]) Tatyana Kotova, Anastasia Pashkina and Lyubov Gerasimova.

But you can't do this task alone - the stencil is big, hard, it should be pressed tightly against the wall so that the paint does not smear, and I woke up Tanya and we went.

Mikhail Dudin's poem "The Ballad of Raven Mountain" included the lines: "Nevsky was full of inscriptions, Every wall screamed, "Attention!

[7] They are frequently the site of commemorations of the siege, and in January 2019 Governor of Saint Petersburg Alexander Beglov laid flowers at the inscription on Nevsky Prospect.

appeared, criticising Governor of Saint Petersburg Valentina Matviyenko for failing to clear the city streets of snow and hanging icicles.