Alexander Nevsky Monastery
The
Alexander Nevsky Monastery complex is home to some of the oldest buildings
in the city, as well as to cemeteries which contain the graves of some
of the giants of Russian culture, including Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky,
and Glinka.
The monastery was founded in July 1710 - seven years after the foundation
of Petersburg - by Peter the Great near to the spot where contemporary
Swedish maps showed the Swedish fort Landskrona had stood. (This was
during the Northern War between Russian and Sweden, so it was a symbolically
important location - especially as it had been sacked in 1301 by an
army from Novgorod under Prince Andrei, son of legendary Russian leader
Alexander Nevsky, during a previous war!) In 1712, the first church
was built, in wood, on the site of the future monastery, and consecrated
in Peter's presence on March 25, 1713. The monastery began working shortly
afterward.
Bronze Horseman
The
Bronze Horseman, an impressive monument to the founder of St Petersburg,
Peter the Great,stands on Senatskaia Ploschad' (Square), facing the
Neva River and surrounded by the Admiralty, St Isaac's Cathedral and
the buildings of the former Senate and Synod - the civil and religious
governing bodies of pre-revolutionary Russia.
The monument was built by order of the Empress Catherine the Great as
a tribute to her famous predecessor on the Russian throne, Peter the
Great. Being a German princess by birth, she was eager to establish
a line of continuity with the earlier Russian monarchs. For that reason
an inscription on the monument reads in Latin and Russian: Petro Primo
Catarina Secunda - To Peter the First from Catherine the Second.
ST. PETERSBURG
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