Anniversary: The Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum Opens — October 19, 1811

The Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo opened on 19 October 1811, admitting thirty boys to a new kind of school built for the sons of the Russian nobility, inside the palace grounds outside St. Petersburg. Alexander Pushkin was one of the thirty. He returned to the date every year of his adult life in verse, and Russia still marks 19 October as Lyceum Day — a school’s opening turned into a poet’s private feast.