As you've probably already noticed, I try to alternate the albums which tell about the little known suburbs and regions (shot in the dull weather :) with albums where mostly beautiful pictures of famous places are gathered. Today is the turn of the beautiful pictures.
Our story will tell about the Anichkov bridge and of course about the famous Klodt's horses.
The present stone Anichkov bridge was built in 1841 by the engineer I.F. Butats, and then rebuilt in 1906 (it was going to pieces).
Until that it was wooden first and stone later but with the towers (alike Lomonosov or Staro-Kalinkin bridges). However the tower bridge was found too narrow for Nevsky prospect.
Although the pictures make an impression of the summer ones, in fact it's the winter - if you look at it closely, you might notice the snow.
The sky was almost dark but, owing to the great light exposure, the colors came out a bit mysterious..
In short - what looks like a summer day is the winter night in reality :-)
There was a long story with the four sculptures "Tamers of the horses" by P.K. Klodt…
Originally they were supposed to be placed at one of the piers in front of the Admiralty. That's the reason why first they made only two of them (in 1841). Then a decision was made to put them at the Anichkov bridge and they made replicas of the first casts. Two sculptures got such a high appreciation that their duplicates were made for Neapol, Berlin and Orlovskaya estate in Strelna (during that the casts at the bridge were temporarily replaced with the gypsum ones).
"Tamers of the horses" in
Berlin (photo by Dmitry Ledentsov)
At some stage (in 1850) Klodt got bored with the repetition work and he made the two new sculptures. So now there're four of them at the bridge and all are different.
An impressive building in the right of the shot is a tax office of the central district :) The building is the post-war construction though now and then I come across the wrong information which declares the presumable age of more than 100 years. More than that - there's a sign on the wall of the building which says that Belinsky used to live there.
As always the readers have made it clear:
"…there were two buildings there before the war. The bomb has fallen on their junction, somewhere around the place where the bay is at present. Still during the blockade the hole was covered with the skillfully made plywood sheet with the drawn on it front. And after the war they've raised the present building using the remains of the previous ones. It's still quite noticeable - the axle bases on the front are different".
Now something else: see a piece of the bridge railing to the right from the sculpture? We'll take a closer look at it now…
The railing is a replica (inaccurate though) of the berlin railing by K.F. Shinkel.
Here I've shot it from the low stand but actually it's not high - about the waist-high.
Let's look at the ornamentation in detail
And this interesting sign is situated in the very bottom of the railing.
One of the readers has told a following story regarding it:
"if my memories are right, these railings were restored - founded anew in the closed town Snezhinsk in the South Urals in the beginning of 1990s.
And this symbol is a an emblem of the town of Snezhinsk. Russian federal nuclear center is situated there, its factory number one had done the work. By the way, Snezhinsk is situated at a 25-kilometer distance from the famous Kasli."
Now let's raise our heads and look in the direction of the Lomonosov square.
The Trinity-Sergius Lavra branch is situated in the left behind the Beloselskiye-Belozerskiye palace (by architect A.M. Gornostaev, 1840).
Recently painted.
The front was restored after the 1990th. The walls used to be flat before that.
Now let's look at the opposite bank..
The trade rows of the Anichkov palace (D. Kvarengy, 1803-1805) are in the left. And if you look a bit to the left..
..you'll see the passageway through them.
The dark silhouette among the boats is something like a barge redesigned into a restaurant..
..but at such a light it looks rather ancient :)
Now we'll go over to another side of the bridge and walk a bit in the direction of Neva.
The Catherine's institute, then the State Public library, at present renamed into the Russian National library.
The building was built according to D. Kvarengy project in 1804-1807.
Let's look back at Anichkov bridge. The already mentioned palace of Beloselskiye-Belozerskiye is seen in the left - now it's in the scaffolding.
The Sheremetievsky palace. We've been here once before - almost the whole of the 40th album was devoted to it. However it looks completely different in the evening.
Bridge of Belinsky (used to be called Simeonovsky until 1923). By the way, it also had towers before. The present look is since 1890th.
Let's take it as a conditional boarder of walk and leave something for the next album.
