From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Summer Garden
Summer Garden
The railing of Summer Garden
Vista through the Summer Garden towards the Summer
Palace, 1716. tween 1771 and 1784 to a design by Georg von Veldten.
The grille is suspended between 36 granite columns
The Summer Garden (Russian: Ле́тний сад, Letniy Sad) crowned with urns and vases. The poet Anna Akhmatova,
occupies an island between the Fontanka, Moika, and the among others, considered the grille to be a pinnacle of
Swan Canal in Saint Petersburg and shares its name with art-casting and one of the symbols of St Petersburg.
the adjacent Summer Palace of Peter the Great. In the 1820s, a grotto pavilion, attributed to Andreas
Schlüter and Georg Johann Mattarnovy, was rebuilt into
Landscape design a coffee house. On the bank of the Carp Pond, a magnif-
icent porphyry vase, a gift of Charles XIV of Sweden to
Original the tsar, was installed in 1839. Fifteen years later, a fa-
mous monument to the children’s writer Ivan Krylov was
The park, first conceived by Peter in 1704, was laid out opened in the park. A sign of the progress of Romanti-
by foreign garden planners between 1712 and 1725 in a cism in Russian official culture, it was the first monument
Petrine Baroque style of the Garden à la française. Three to a poet erected in Eastern Europe.
years later, the walks were lined with a hundred alle-
gorical marble sculptures, executed by Francesco Penso,
Pietro Baratta, Marino Gropelli, Alvise Tagliapietra, and
other Venetian sculptors that were acquired by Sava
Vladislavich. In the late 20th century, 90 surviving stat-
ues were moved indoors, while modern replicas took
their place in the park.
The sequence of patterned parterres, originally more
formal than the current landscape, were the site of Im-
perial assemblies, or lavish parties which often included
balls, feasts, and fireworks. Apart from the statuary, a
major park attraction were the fountains, the oldest in
Russia, representing scenes from Aesop’s fables. Some of One of the walks of the Summer Garden.
these fell out of use and were demolished after the 1777
inundation which destroyed the fountain machinery ac- On 4 April 1866 Dmitry Karakozov made the first at-
quired by Peter the Great in Britain. tempt to assassinate the tsar when he walked out of the
Summer Garden. As the attempt proved abortive, the
Later ponderous Summergrille memorial chapel in a Russian
A delicate iron-cast railing, separating the park from the Revival style was built over the gate. This rather incon-
public walk of the Palace Embankment, was installed be-
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Summer Garden
gruous attachment was demolished by the Bolsheviks af-
ter the October Revolution.
External links
The park, was chosen by Alexander Pushkin as a set- • Media related to Summer Garden at Wikimedia
ting for childhood walks of the fictional character Eugene Commons
Onegin. • The Summer Garden & Palace of Peter I
• Wandering Camera in the Summer Garden
Present day • Houses and monuments of the Summer Garden
• Autumn views of the Summer Garden
The Summer Garden Park remains one of the most ro- • Winter views of the Summer Garden
mantic and evocative places in St Petersburg. Coordinates: 59°56′46″N 30°20′06″E / 59.946°N 30.335°E /
59.946; 30.335
See also
• Alexander Garden (Saint Petersburg)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Garden"
Categories: Parks and open spaces in Saint Petersburg, Baroque gardens, Gardens in Russia, Sculpture gardens, trails
and parks, Open air museums in Russia, Urban public parks, Art gallery places, Landscape design history, Hermitage
Museum
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