On the Road in Russia: Peter the Great Statue in St. Petersburg

Peter the Great of Russia fascinates Westerners. On a previous trip to St. Petersburg, we saw statues of this man who cared about his country. “The Bronze Horseman is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Imposing, showing resolution of a man who forced the established institutions to modernize.

Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet. The name comes from an 1833 poem of the same name by Aleksander Pushkin, which is widely considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature. The statue is now one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg. The statue’s pedestal is the enormous Thunder Stone, the largest stone ever moved by humans.[1] The stone originally weighed about 1500 tons, but was carved down during transportation to its current size.”1

On a sightseeing tour of Peter and Paul Fortress, we saw the physical appearance of Peter the Great. “With its tiny head and massive torso, it’s hard to believe that this statue offers a true representation of Peter the Great, the founder of the Peter and Paul Fortress (and of St. Petersburg). According to sculptor Mikhail Shemyakin, however, it was based on the death-mask and wax figure of Peter kept in the Hermitage. Either way, this striking statue, placed on a bench in front of the Main Guardhouse building in 1991, is one of the most popular sights in the fortress.”2 A new appreciation of pre-communist Russia is the trend, with the rebuilding of over 100 Russian Orthodox churches.

References:

1.       en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Horseman

2.       www.saint-petersburg.com/museums/peter-paul-fortress/monument-to-peter-the-great/