Elephant yards in St. Petersburg

The first elephant, a gift from the Persian Shah to Peter I, arrived in St. Petersburg in 1714. St. Petersburg was still in its infancy, and it was already given gifts. More precisely, to its founder, Peter the Great.302 years ago, the Persian Shah presented a valuable and unusual gift to the Emperor of Russia - an elephant. The animal on a sailboat was taken to Astrakhan, and from there the elephant passed through Russia to St. Petersburg. And in order for the elephant not to damage his legs for such a long transition, special flip-flops of the appropriate size were sewn for him. According to rumors, these were special leather shoes that required constant repair and thereby enriched its conductors. People in Russia have never seen an elephant, went on the road with bread and salt to honor the strange animal.

The elephant was taken to St. Petersburg with great difficulty. He lived in the Beast Yard near the Post Office (now there is the Marble Palace near the Champ de Mars). The elephant, sent from Persia to St. Petersburg, was accompanied by two “zverovers” and an “elephant teacher”. There lived “elephant masters” – Persians in houses built for them. The place where they lived was called Caravan-Sarai (hence the name Caravan Street). "The Elephant Teacher." Asatium provided treatment and "hygienic walks" to the elephant. It wasn't easy.

When the elephant was driven along Perspective Street (Nevsky Prospect), many people gathered to look at it, especially soldiers of the Life Guard. Often, the audience behaved obscenely, laughed at the Persians, threw stones and sticks at them. As a result, there was an order of the city authorities “On the announcement of the inhabitants with a subscription not to commit insanity to the elephant in seeing off the elephant.” According to M. I. Pylyaev, in a year, 1500 poods of cane, 136 poods of 35 pounds of millet, 365 poods of flour, 27 poods of 36 pounds of sugar, about 7 pounds of cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, 45 poods of salt, as well as ... 40 buckets of grape wine and 60 buckets of vodka.

In April of the same 1714, on the banks of the Neva River opposite the Trinity Wharf (near the current Trinity Bridge), a “Beast Yard” was built, which became a haven for the first elephant who lived here for three years (the record of his death on May 23, 1717 is included in the “everyday notes” of the first governor-general of St. Petersburg, the Most High Prince A. D. Menshikov). According to Weber, the elephant died because “the house specially built for him too much drowned and the air became carbon monoxide”. With the death of the first elephant, the "Beast Yard", by the way, was not empty: its inhabitants were lions (brought in 1719), leopard, porcupine, monkeys, white and brown bears. The second elephant, also donated by the Persian Shah, appeared in St. Petersburg in 1723; a special vessel had to be built to transport it by sea. In 1736, a third elephant arrived in St. Petersburg from the Persian Shah Nadir, and five years later - as a gift to Ivan VI from Khan Samas Kuli - 14 more relatives were brought to him. This required the construction of a special "Elephant yard" on the Fontanka, as well as the construction of an area for walking animals with a descent to the Fontanka. The street adjacent to the “Elephant yard” was called “Elephant”. In the autumn of the same year, a scandalous stir arose: according to the St. Petersburg Vedomosti, during one of the walks, the elephants “began to be angry among themselves about the females,” three of them broke out into the city; two were soon caught, and the third “went through the garden, broke down the wooden hedge and went to Vasilievsky Island,” where, according to the newspaper, “broke the Chukhon village.”

Historian of St. Petersburg local historian Mikhail Ivanovich Pylyaev writes: “At the end of September 1741, a numerous embassy arrived in St. Petersburg from the Persian Shah Nadir with rich gifts for the court; 14 elephants are listed among the gifts, which were placed in newly built barns on October 9.” The rumor brought the news that elephants are huge and polypod. And those mastodons had to march along the Nevsky. And the Anichkov bridge across the Fontanka at that time was still painfully thinned - a nekasist and even very narrow. This bridge was one of the first to appear. And that's when St. Petersburg was preparing to meet the embassy of the Persian Shah Nadir. The news came that among the many valuable gifts there will be elephants. The St. Petersburg people knew about elephants mainly that they were very large and very heavy. Concerned about the weight of such giants, carpentry, master von Boles reported to the Chancellery from the buildings that the Anichkov bridge is in considerable dilapidation, the flooring boards on it break through and need to repair the bridge, so that it was without danger, and elephants could not be any damage. The bridge was renovated, expanded. Elephants safely crossed the Fontanka and were placed in a special, already second elephant (now it is the hotel "October" on the square of the Uprising). At the Elephant yard, a square was built, also called the Elephant. They built a descent to Fontanka "for the best ability for all elephants to swim."

In 1744. The elephant yard was moved to the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and the Lithuanian Canal (opposite the current Moscow station). The current Suvorov Avenue, where elephants were taken to walk, was Elephant Avenue at that time. Over time, in St. Petersburg, the word “to loitere”, that is, to hang around, staring around. And the story about the walk of the elephant used in his famous fable I. A. Krylov “Elephant and Moska” (“On the streets of the Elephant drove, as can be seen, on display. It is known that Elephants in a curiosity we have, So behind the elephant of the crowd onlookers went. There was an elephant on the streets! Grandpa Krylov didn't lie. From the Italian street, where the first elephants stood, they walked to Fontanka to swim. And even, historians say, Anichkov bridge was strengthened solely for the sake of these animals, so that the boards under them did not break down.

At the end of the eighteenth century, elephants were transported to Tsarskoye Selo, where they lived and even reproduced. In 1917, the last animal was shot dead. There were elephants in the Zoological Garden. Elephant Betty died during the Great Patriotic War in the full prime of life from a bomb. The first post-war elephant was introduced in 1951. The latter was escorted to Tashkent in 1975, where he died shortly thereafter. Since then, there is no elephant in the Leningrad Zoo.