Field of Mars

Next to the Summer Gardens lies the Field of Mars - the largest square of St Petersburg. During the time of Peter the Great there was a marsh in this area from which the Rivers Mya and Krivusha (now the Moika and the Catherine Canal) flew out. Peter ordered to drain the marsh and had two straight canals, linking the Mya with the Neva and the Swan and Red Canals, dug along the sides. The drained expanse was used to build a palace for Catherine I, Peter's consort, and the deserted place began to be called the Tsarina's Meadow. The grounds were used for the training and parades of the Guards Regiments as early as the time of Peter the Great. On festive days popular amusements took place here accompanied by fireworks and therefore the area became also known as the Amusement Field. Later it was renamed the Field of Mars in the Western manner. The barracks of the Pavlovsky Regiment were built at the western border of the field in 1817-20 to aprojectby Vasily Stasov. On 23 March 1917 the remains of the victims of the February Revolution were buried on the Field of Mars and in 1918-19 many prominent figures of the October Revolution and Civil War were interred there. At the same time the first large-scale memorial of the post-revolutionary period - the granite monument To the Fighters of the Revolution, was unveiled on the Field of Mars, and in 1957 an Eternal Fire was lit in the area. For nearly two centuries the Field of Mars was a dusty and negligent expanse in the centre of the city dubbed ironically the "St Petersburg Sahara". In the 1920s, a large flower parterre divided by wide avenues was laid out in the area to a project by the architect Ivan Tomin.

View oftheMoika, Field of Mars and barracks of the Pavlovsky Regiment

The Field of Mars serves as a vivid background for the monument to Alexander Suvorov unveiled during the first anniversary of his death on 5 May 1801 and created in 1799-1801 by the sculptor Mikhail Kozlovsky. The symbolic statue dedicated to the great soldier shows the Roman god of war Mars. Contemporaries regarded the monument as a symbol of the military glory of Russia.

Suvorov Square

Monument to Alexander Suvorov. Architect: Andrei Voronikhin,
sculptors: Mikhail Kozlovsky, Fiodor Gordeyev (bas-relief), 1799-1801