The Summer Gardens

The Summer Gardens, founded simultaneously with the city, lie in the central part of the northern capital, on an island formed by the Neva, Fontanka and the Swan Canal In 1704-05 Peter the Great himself supervised the laying out of the royal "kitchen garden" at his summer residence. The Tsar wanted to make the Summer Gardens "better than the Versailles of the French King." Plants for the garden were brought from all corners of the country and from abroad. The garden was designed in the then fashionable regular style with a strictly geometrical arrangement of its avenues, with hedges, groups of trees, busts, statues and whimsical park structures -a grotto, summer pavilions, galleries, labyrinths and trellises. The gardens that lived through several disastrous inundations suffered great damage from them: the fountains of Peter's age were destroyed in 1777 to be never restored; other structures in the gardens were also damaged. The Summer Gardens turned into a landscape park, while retaining the straight avenues, hedges alongside the Fon-tanka and some of the sculptural decor. The magnificent railing protecting the Summer Gardens on the Neva side, a work by Yury Velten and Piotr Yegorov, was erected in 1773 - 76. The railing on the Moika side produced after a project by Louis Charlemagne, appeared in the 1820s. While walking in the garden you should not miss a chance to visit the Summer Palace of Peter the Great, to drop into the Coffee House and the Tea House, as well as to enjoy the monument to the fable writer Ivan Krylov and many marble sculptures.

Avenue in the Summer Gardens

Originally the Summer Gardens reached the bank of the Neva - the present-day embankment was constructed in the second half of the eighteenth century. In Peter's time guests used to arrive in boats to ornate wooden galleries which served both as piers and reception rooms. It was there that Peter's famous assemblies as well as court festivities and receptions for envoys were held. Until the end of the eighteenth century the gardens were accessible only to the Tsar's closest associates. Guests walked along the straight avenues running amidst clipped shrubs and trees alternating with flowerbeds and green grass arranged in whimsical patterns. Highlights in the shady avenues were white marble statues of deities, busts of emperors and heroes and the allegorical figures of characters from Aesop's fables.

The statuary always was a pride of the Summer Gardens as it is today. In Western Europe, it was a custom to decorate gardens and parks with works of ancient sculpture and Peter shared the tastes of his age.

However, sculpture was not only an element of decoration for the Tsar, who invested their use with an edifying significance. The Summer Gardens were for him a sort of the 'Academy" where Russian people were introduced to the European education. Therefore statues were arranged so that they would match one another in their subject matter and the same principle was employed in their purchases. The busts of army leaders and emperors served to extol royal power and representations of characters from ancient mythology allowed inculcating the ideas of enlightenment necessary for Russia. Thus, the statue Architecture commissioned by Peter the Great was associated with an important historical event - the construction of St Petersburg.

The earliest piece of sculpture in the Summer Gardens is the sculptural group Cupid and Psyche. It depicts the culminating episode of the myth when Psyche lit a lamp to see the face of her sleeping lover, the god of love Cupid. But on awakening he immediately left Psyche because the gods forbade her to look at him and he used to come to her only by night.

Statues might seem somewhat naive and not very skilfully made to a contemporary taste, but their value now, in the same way as before, lies primarily in their harmonious blending with the surrounding elements of the gardens.

Peter the Great bought statues or commissioned them through his agents in Italy, for Russia had no secular sculpture in his time. Venice was especially famous for its school of garden sculpture. Statues and busts for the decoration of the Summer Gardens were made by the eminent Venetian masters Pietro Baratta, Giovanni Bonazza, Francesco Cabianca, Antonio Tarsia, Marino Gropelli and others. Peter the Great succeeded in acquiring authentic ancient works of sculpture, although their export was forbidden. 89 out of 250 pieces of marble sculpture produced by the Italian masters have reached our days. Few places in European countries have such large collections of garden sculpture.

In the nineteenth century the Summer Gardens were not as extensive and sumptuously decorated as during the age of Peter the Great, but they still remained the largest and most beautiful in the capital. During the entire May it was the favourite place of promenades of high society and in the summer, when the choice public left the city, the gardens used to be quiet and desolate. Writers, poets and composers liked to meet in the wide and shady avenues. The great poet Alexander Pushkin, who lived in Pantelei-mon Street nearby in 1834, often came for a stroll here.

Nowadays, inhabitants of St Petersburg rank the Summer Gardens among their most favourite places of recreation and walks. They form, together with the Summer Palace of Peter the Great, a historical museum and still gladden their guests by the unparalleled railing on the Neva side, white marble statues and the calm of its shady avenues.

Peter the Great, who was fond of water, always sought to settle near a river, lake or sea. So his first stone dwelling in St Petersburg, the Summer Palace, stands right on the bank of the Neva, near the place where a smaller river, then known as the Nameless Channel, flew into it. Later this river came to be called the Fontanka because it gave water for the fountains of the Summer Gardens. A small harbour was dug out on the southern side of the palace and the Tsar could descend to the boat waiting for him right from his house. The harbour has long since been filled with earth and the Summer Palace has become a museum. A small two-storeyed building reminiscent of houses of Dutch burghers of the early eighteenth century, was built in 1710-14 by Domenico Trezzini and its decoration was contributed by the well-known German architect Andreas Schliiter. The bas-reliefs produced by Schluter for the facades and placed between the windows of the ground and first floors, feature subjects from ancient mythology celebrating the naval power of Russia and its victory over Sweden in the Northern War. The rooms of Peter the Great were on the ground floor, while Catherine and their children occupied the first floor. Both storeys had the same number and arrangement of the rooms.

The palace conveys the spirit of that time and reflects the architectural features of Peter's age conditioned by the state tasks. The ancient Russian traditions are combined here with the features of Western European fashions. The corridor, connected with all the rooms of the palace, is the only interior designed traditionally. The other rooms are located as a suite, a principle that quickly won recognition in the Russian Baroque. Now the interiors are furnished with authentic pieces from that age. The furniture, articles of carved wood and glass, precious fabrics and mirrors, ceiling paintings and beautiful pictures were all characteristic of court life in the early eighteenth century.