Svetlanskaya is Vladivostok's main boulevard — a long waterfront street lined with 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings, interspersed with Soviet-era additions. Walking its length gives the best sense of the city's layered history: the ornate merchant palaces of the late imperial period, the heavier Stalinist buildings of the 1950s, and the glass-and-steel additions of the post-Soviet era.
The street runs roughly east-west along the northern shore of the Golden Horn Bay. Several of the best restaurants and bars are on or just off Svetlanskaya. The Arseniev Museum, the Primorye Art Gallery, and several historic churches are within walking distance. In the evening, the street fills with people and is one of the more pleasant places to walk in any Russian city.