Pushkin is a city in the Russian Federation, administratively subordinate to the City Hall of St. Petersburg; located within the Prinevskaya lowland 24 km south of St. Petersburg. Children's Village Railway Station. In 2001, the population of Pushkin was 93,000 people. Until 1918 - Tsarskoye Selo, until 1937 - Children's Village. Modern name in memory of the centenary of the death of A. S. Pushkin.
History of the city
During the Northern War, the Sarskaya manor was located on the site of the future Tsarskoe Selo. In 1709, Peter I granted it to A. D. Menshikov, three years later the manor passed into the possession of the wife of the tsar, Catherine Alekseevna. After 1725, one of the royal residences was located here, and the Finnish name was changed to a similar sounding Tsarskoye Selo. The first stone palace was built according to the project of I. F. Braunstein in 1717-1723. At the same time, the birth of the park began with a small regular garden. In 1741-1753, the palace was expanded and superbuilt (A. V. Kvasov and S. I. Chevakinsky), in the 1750s a greenhouse hall (V. V. Rastrelli) was erected, in 1734-1746 the Znamenskaya church (Chevakinsky, Zemtsov) was built. So determined the final length of the palace - 325 m. Thanks to the activities of Zemtsov, Kvasov, Chevakinsky and Rastrelli, Tsarskoye Selo in the middle of the 18th century became the largest palace and park ensemble in Russia.
Since the late 1760s, great changes have occurred in landscape art - the regular layout has been replaced by landscape. New principles were reflected in the Tsarskoye Selo parks and are associated with the names of A. Rinaldi, Yu. M. Felten, and then with the works of C. Cameron, D. Quarenghi and I. V. Neelov. In the old regular part of the park, bushes and trees stopped cutting, and it gradually acquired a natural appearance. Built in the park by J. Quarenghi Alexander Palace (beginning of construction in 1792) became a model of architecture of mature classicism. The new water duct allowed to create a system of cascade ponds. The total area of ponds in the parks was 342 thousand square meters. m, of which the Big Pond is 160 thousand square meters. m. After the reign of Paul I, work resumed on the implementation of the plan of the architect Goeste, in which much attention was paid to the issues of improvement.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, V. P. Stasov became the leading architect of Tsarskoe Selo. Under him, the gates of “My Dear Colleagues” were built, and the Grand Duke’s wing was converted under the Lyceum. Since 1808, the village has become a city, the center of the Tsarskoye Selo district. In 1811, the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum was opened here (from 1844 - Aleksandrovsky), of whose pupils, besides A. S. Pushkin, many more people who made up the glory of Russia are known. In the late 19th century, it was a model city with running water, electric lighting, sewerage and an incinerator. In 1837, the first railway in Russia was built here. From the walls of the local gymnasium, where the poet I. F. Annensky taught, came the poets L. N. Gumilev and A. A. Akhmatova.
After the February Revolution in March and early August 1917, Nicholas II was detained in the Alexander Palace. In 1918, the Catherine Palace became a museum. During the Great Patriotic War, parks and palaces suffered tremendous damage: more than a quarter of trees were cut down, barracks were arranged in park pavilions and palaces. In January 1944, Soviet troops saw the Catherine Palace in ruins. Restoration work began immediately after the liberation, and in 1945 parks were opened for visitors, and in 1959 - the first restored halls of the Catherine Palace.
In the northern part of the city, near the parks is the Kitaeva House - a rare example of a wooden country house. Built in 1826 according to the project of Gornostaev, the house is well preserved. In the summer of 1831, A. S. Pushkin lived here with his family. The decoration of the station square is the station building, built in 1948-1950 (the author of the project E. A. Levinson with the participation of A. A. Grushke).
Attractions in Pushkin
The Catherine Palace is an ensemble, which, in addition to the palace itself, includes the "Cold Baths" with the "Agate Rooms", the Cameron Gallery, the Lyceum building and the Znamensk Church. The latter is the earliest fully preserved building (1734-1746; the bell tower and spire of the church blown up by the Nazis were restored according to the project of the architect M. Y. Plotnikov).
Catherine, or the Great Palace - the compositional center of the Tsarskoye Selo ensemble. In 1752-1757, Rastrelli rebuilt it in the Baroque style of the 18th century. The gilded sculpture of the facades of the palace made an indelible impression on people of the middle of the 18th century. Thanks to the expressive plasticity of forms Rastrelli managed to avoid the feeling of monotony of the extended facade. He did not mask the length of the palace, but emphasized it by placing the main entrance at its far end. To get to the palace, you had to walk along the entire front facade. Only in 1860 Monighetti moved the entrance to the center and built a new grand staircase.
The basis of the composition of Rastrelli is a suite of halls, in which the dominant position is a large hall with an area of about a thousand square meters. It has windows on both sides, richly decorated with mirrors and gilding. The ceiling is decorated with a huge plafond with allegorical images of the work of the artist P. Valeriani. After the fire of the palace Stasov resumed Rastrelliev decoration of a number of interiors. Behind the palace there is a courtyard with semicircular rounds formed by service buildings, the so-called circumference. The entrance to the courtyard is decorated with gates made at the Sestroretsk factory by drawing Rastrelli. The interior of the era of Rastrelli was a through suite of luxuriously cleaned gilded carvings, mirrors and valuable materials of the ceremonial premises (Big Hall, Amber Room, Church). In the 1780s, it was reworked by C. Cameron (Green Dining Room, Arabesque Hall). In the 1820s, the Blue Living Room (Stasov) was created. By the thirtieth anniversary of St. Petersburg, the Amber Room was restored in the Catherine Palace. Work on its reconstruction began in 1979, when it became clear that the original was lost forever.
At the turn of the 1770s-1780s, there is a change in artistic tastes. The Baroque splendor of Rastrelliev’s architecture is perceived as a “barbaric luxury”, as a result, buildings in a new, classical style appear from the Big Pond. The architect Cameron in 1780-1787 built the pavilion "Cold Baths" with the pavilion "Agate Rooms" above it, which demonstrated the products of Russian stone cutters.
The building of the Cameron Gallery is an elegant Ionic colonnade of 48 columns standing above the powerful arcade of the basement. At the beginning of the lower march of the grand staircase are bronze sculptures of Hercules and Flora, cast according to the model of F. G. Gordeev. The gallery was intended for ceremonial lunches and walks in bad weather. The four-storey building of the Grand Duke's Corps (1789-1792) built according to the project of I.V. Neelov was given to accommodate the Lyceum. To communicate with the palace across the Garden street was thrown arch with the transition. In the Lyceum in 1811-1817 Pushkin studied. Nearby there is a Lyceum garden, in the center of which in 1900 a monument to the young Pushkin is installed - the best work of the sculptor R. R. Bach.
City parks:
Tsarskoye Selo Park Ensemble consists of Catherine, Alexander, Babolov and Separate Parks. The main attraction is the Catherine Park (103 hectares). From the main road it is separated by a narrow Cascade Canal with twelve cascade steps. The regular part of the park, the so-called Old Garden, is divided into four sections. In the 1720s, the master M. Focht broke the stalls here, paved paths, the Hermitage Alley with two ponds on the sides. The old garden is decorated with many park buildings and sculptures: The upper bathtub, the Hermitage, the Moray Column, the gate "To my kind colleagues", the Granite terrace, decorated with copies of ancient sculptures (made in 1850 by the method of electroplastic surgery). A special place is occupied by the Big Pond, on the banks of which are the Grotto and the Admiralty. There is a vertical of the Chesme column with a height of 14 m. It was built in 1774-1778 by A. Rinaldi in memory of the defeat of the Turkish fleet in Chesma Bay. During the Great Patriotic War, the column suffered, but later was completely restored. There is also a romantic tower-ruin height of 21 m and Gothic Gate - an example of cast iron artistic casting.
In the landscape part of the Catherine Park stands out Chinese village - a group of structures in the style of chinoisery. This is a large violin gazebo and bizarre gazebos Big and Small whim. A big whim stands on a high mound of earth left after digging ponds in the Catherine Park. In the embankment there is a seven-meter high arch, crowned with a light "Chinese" arbor.
Alexander Park has a landscape character. Its main structure and example of classical architecture is the Alexander Palace, which in 1792 began to build Quarenghi for Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich. The facade of the palace is distinguished by a colonnade and a grand staircase. The territory of the New Garden is cut through canals with many bridges: Great Chinese Bridge, Small Chinese Bridges, Cross Bridge, Dragon Bridge. In the landscape part, two towers stand out - Chapelle and the White Tower, designed by the architect Menelas. On the northern border of the park in 1909-1912, according to the project of V. A. Pokrovsky, the Fedorovsky town was built, one of the monuments of the neo-Russian style. According to the plan of Menelas, at the entrance to the city on the site of the old outpost in 1827-1830, the Egyptian Gate was erected, two powerful pylons of which are lined with cast-iron slabs with enlarged copies of Egyptian reliefs (V. I. Demut-Malinovsky).
Andrey Shepilov
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