STATUE OF STONE-THE-GREAT - BRONZE HORSEMAN
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Place des Décembristes, facing the Neva River, the Bronze Knight, the oversized homage of Catherine II to Peter the Great, is historically the first monument erected in Saint Petersburg. The orthodoxy forbidding the sculptures, Great Catherine, on Diderot's recommendation, called upon the Frenchman Falconet. With one hand, the tsar holds the reins of his rearing horse and, with the other, points to the Pierre-et-Paul fortress, the very first building in the city. The hero of Pushkin's last poem, Eugene, is an obscure employee whose fiancée has just been swept away by a flood of the Neva. Desperate, il passe in front of the statue and attacks the tsar, whom he holds responsible for his misfortunes. Le souverain outraged then descends from its granite pedestal and throws his mount into the streets of the city. Eugene, panic-stricken and chased by the Bronze Horseman, sinks into madness.
The founding czar of the city crushes with his hooves any attempt at rebellion, even that of a desperate young man. Pushkin was the first to scratch the cult devoted to Peter the Great and his reforms, certainly modernist but which propelled Russia into a world that was not his own. The image of the flood is reminiscent of the ambiguity of the myth of St. Petersburg. Splendid by its architecture, the city is always at the mercy of a flood of the Neva. Its very origin seems almost unreal, since it was built on a huge swamp deemed uninhabitable and at the cost of thousands of deaths.
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A magnificent statue, dedicated to the founder of the city peter the great's, located not far from a super park.
To see!