Famous Petersburg ethnographer A.A. Ivanov in this unique publication painstakingly collected and thoroughly commented on the most interesting and noteworthy ads from the newspaper St. Petersburg Vedomosti, published from the 1730s to the 1820s. Over time, newspaper ads - seemingly short-lived traces of everyday human activity - gained the power and significance of full-fledged archival documents. The result was an extremely entertaining book with a lot of interesting information about urban toponymy, the history of individual buildings, the everyday life of citizens and much more. Touching the pages of the history of the young Northern capital, presented in such an unusual form, is very interesting and informative.