Monument to Nicholas I

The Neo-Baroque monument to the Russian ruler Nicholas I was designed by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand in 1856. When he planned the registration of Saint Isaac's Square, the uniform architectural ensembles of the Palace Square (in 1843) and the Senate Square had already been finished (in 1849). Monuments to the emperors Peter I and Alexander I dominated these squares. By tradition, de Montferrand intended to construct a monument on the new site, to unite the buildings of different architectural styles already there. with Saint Isaac's Cathedral. In the centre is Monument to Nicholas I At the personal request of his successor Alexander II, Nicholas was represented as a prancing knight, "in the military outfit in which the late tsar was most majestic". Around the base are allegorical statues modelled on Nicholas I's daughters and personifying virtues. The statue faces Saint Isaac's Cathedral, with the horse's posterior turned to the Mariinsky Palace of Nicholas's daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna. This was said to have caused the Grand Duchess considerable discomfort. The monument also depicts the social activities of the emperor: Nicholas I was for many years the head of the nearby Life Guard Horse Regiment, an elite cuirassier heavy cavalry unit of the Imperial Life Guard, also known as Konnaya Gvardiya (Horse Guards) or Konnogvardejsky regiment. Elements of the city topography, the Horse Guards (Konnogvardejsky) parkway, Horse Guards Lane, and the Horse Guards manege are associated with the Horse Guards regiment and the uniform in which the emperor is depicted. Soviet historians and critics considered it a 'composite-stylistic' monument because they thought its elements did not combine to form a uniform composition: • The pedestal, the reliefs on a pedestal, the azid, and the equestrian statue were not subordinated to a uniform idea and in some measure contradicted each other. • The forms of a monument were crushed and overloaded by fine details, and the composition was elaborate and unduly decorative. 's modernist novel Petersburg|alt= However, some aspects of the composition were considered positive: Contemporaries have noticed that this monument is aligned with the statue of the Bronze Horseman, and is almost an identical distance from Saint Isaac's Cathedral. This juxtaposition has generated numerous jokes of the type "Kolya to Petia catches up, but Isaak's Cathedral disturbs!" There is also a city legend, which claims that the day after the monument was unveiled, on a foot of the horse there was found a wooden tablet on which had been written: "you will not catch up!". On the basis of this legend in the 19th century in St. Petersburg there was a saying: "the Fool of the clever catches up, but the monument to it disturbs" In the Soviet era there was a legend about the uniqueness of the design of the monument, that its axle load distribution was executed by lead shot. But when the monument was subjected to restoration in the 1980s, no trace of any lead shot was found inside it. == Erection of the monument ==

On the first anniversary of death of emperor Nikolas I (in February 1856) Emperor Alexander II had published a command to begin of designing a monument. Architect de Montferrand received the commission to present "reasons about a monument to Nikolay I" (). In May 1856 de Montferrand's project was confirmed and in June the monument installation site was defined: "opposite to the Mariinsky Palace, faced to the Isaakievsky cathedral" (). in which it confuses the cholera revolt of 1831 to an episode of 1825 (Decembrist revolt). Russian researcher Nikolay Shilder has specified this error in his works. ;January 20, 1833 or Delivery of the Codification of Law to Count Mikhail Speransky: The certificate of rewarding of Mikhail Speransky of Nicholas I Is represented: the emperor removes from itself a tape of an Order of St. Andrew. It was mainly through the work of Speransky that a new code was introduced during Nicholas I's reign in January 1835, marking a milestone in Russian legal history. Date specifies decree signing about rewarding has been signed. The author is sculptor Salemann, the High relief are cast in masterful in Galvanic institution of Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg. ;November 13, 1851: Survey by the emperor of Verebinsky bridge on Nikolaevskaya railway between Petersburg and Moscow at the first journey on this road. The sculptor is Ramazanov, the high relief are cast in masterful in Galvanic institution of Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg. On pedestal corners allegorical figures of Justice, Force, Wisdom and Belief to which portrait similarity to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her daughters is given: grand duchesses Alexandra, Maria and Olga. The Russian masters Nikolai Ramazanov and Robert Salemann designed for the monument's pedestal. Salemann also sculpted the four allegorical female figures, steel fixtures, ornaments on the pedestal. The pedestal stands on a short platform made of red Finnish granite with three steps. The lower part of the pedestal is of dark gray granite and red porphyry. The middle part, hewn from a block of red Finnish granite, is decorated with bronze bas-reliefs. The upper part of the pedestal is made of red porphyry. The pedestal of the horse statue is made of white Italian marble. Registration Base of a statue have added with graceful lanterns-floor lamps with fixtures, they are made on de Montferrand's plan, the project was executed by architect Robert Veigelt. In 1860 the monument composition was finished by a bronze lattice from twenty links. The lattice project belongs to architect Ludvig Bonstedt. All these elements are cast in Galvanic institution of Maximilian, Duke of Leuchtenberg. == Safety and restorations ==

The monument's technical proficiency was cited as a reason why this statue — the only one from a cluster of outdoor sculptures representing 19th-century Russian royalty — survived the Soviet period virtually intact. However, a bronze fencing around the monument, first installed in 1860, was dismantled in 1940. During World War II the monument was covered by a case from the boards, filled with bags of sand. ==Notes==