Flowing through the 18th- and 19th-century capital of the
Russian Empire, the Moyka, similarly to other downtown rivers and streets got its sides decorated with Russian nobles' city palaces, mansions and gardens, historical churches, monuments, apartment buildings and hotels, public squares etc.
Source. Summer Garden, Saint Michael's Castle, Mikhailovsky Garden and the Field of Mars The Moyka is a right-hand
distributary of the
Fontanka and starts its course immediately to the south of the
Summer Garden, making the southern border of the garden Island and separating it from the reddish
Saint Michael's Castle.
The Summer Garden The Summer Garden, which during the Swedish possession of these lands until they were taken by Russia in 1703 in the
Great Northern War, was part of a Swedish army major. After the foundation and planning of the new Russian capital in the lands of Saint Petersburg, the victorious
Peter I of Russia made this land plot into a gridlined garden where he placed for the first time in Russian history multiple imported statues of Greek and
Roman mythology characters and had his
Summer Palace built here following Dutch examples he had seen and liked on his
grand tour of Europe. The Summer Garden and Palace, as well as the nearby Saint Michael's Castle and Garden, in post-Soviet Russia became branches of the national treasury of domestic art the
Russian Museum and can be visited. The Summer Garden was mentioned by
Alexander Pushkin both as his frequent place for pleasant walks, and as destination for childhood walks with a French governor of his classical for
Russian literature novel in verse protagonist
Eugene Onegin. The garden's Moyka fence was designed by
Ludwig Charlemagne. and attributes of Roman
lictors' authority -
fasces Behind the fence there is a pond on which
swans are released in warm season.
Saint Michael's Castle Across the Moyka from the Summer Garden stands
Saint Michael's Castle commissioned in late 18th century for himself by Emperor
Paul I of Russia who had been born on this site when it was occupied by another
Summer Palace - of his officially childless unmarried aunt
Elisabeth I of Russia. Inspired by Western Europe models, the Castle was symbolic both of the Emperor's romantic chivalrous inclinations and his fear for his life. Interested in the high spirit of European knights, he gave shelter in Russia to the
Order of Malta when its members lost their island to the troops of
Napoleon. Paul's decision was unusual, given known rivalry between their Roman Catholic and his Russian Orthodox Church. He temporarily served as their Grand Master, and the Castle served as a residence connected with this together with his other ones including Gatchina
Priory Palace. (See
Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller). His arbitrary domestic and international politics caused dissatisfaction among some of his courtiers who plotted against him, and he was assassinated in his Castle bedroom despite all his precautions: the Castle was surrounded by
water on all four sides,
drawbridges raised every night, yet the guard let conspirators pass as the latter included senior supervising officers. After him the Castle was virtually neglected by the royal family of his eldest son and heir
Alexander I of Russia and was used as a shared living space by some of the Imperial household until it was converted into a Military Engineering School whose cadets included the future writer
Fyodor Dostoevsky. The cadets studied and lived in the building under Paul's third son, Alexander's successor Emperor
Nicholas I of Russia, and the edifice became also known as Engineers' Castle. Occupied then by various Soviet institutions like the Central Naval Library, now the Castle is part of
Russian Museum, has been repaired and holds national exhibitions of art connected with history of Russia. Next to the Castle, on the Fontanka over the water near the source of Moyka, stands a miniature statue
Chizhik-Pyzhik of a little bird
siskin across the river from the 19th-century Emperor's Law School, whose students' uniforms' colour matched the bird's colouration.
Mikhailovsky Garden and the Field of Mars On the right bank of Moyka across the
Swan Canal from the Summer Garden lies a large open square named the
Field of Mars after the
Roman mythology god of war because in the late 18th and in 19th centuries it was used for Emperors'
military parades of the regiments quartered in the city as the capital of the country. Before that, the once marshy ground had been drained with canals and turned into a public meadow with amusements. When turned to military use, the ground was decorated with two monuments to victorious Russian Field Marshals of the second half of 18th century. One of the memorials -
an obelisk to Count
Pyotr Rumyantsev - was later moved to a dedicated smaller Rumyantsev Garden in
Vassiliyevskiy Island, while the other, the
Suvorov Monument depicting Count
Alexander Suvorov as
Mars, now on
Suvorov Square at the other end of the field, facing
Trinity Bridge. After the
February 1917 democratic revolution that destroyed the
Russian autocracy, part of the field was used to bury the casualties of the revolutionary events, and in the Soviet times this part was made into the
Monument to the Fighters of the Revolution, a memorial of granite slabs inscribed with dedications to the heroes by the Bolshevik Government Secretary for Education
Anatoly Lunacharskiy, and a gas burner
eternal flame was placed in the middle. Many cultivars of
lilac were planted in the square. In post-Soviet Russia the rest of the field has seen a number of public political
rallies.
Mikhailovsky Garden is across the Moyka from the Field of Mars and across Sadovaya ("Garden") Street. It is a 19th-century
landscape garden, whose southern part meets the garden façade of
Mikhailovsky Palace facing
Arts Square not far from the city's main street
Nevsky Prospect. The Palace, built for
Paul I's fourth son
Grand Duke Mikhail, was later in the 19th century converted to the royal museum of the nation's art named after Alexander III with the nationwide ethnographic department. These serve to this day as the
Russian Museum and the
Russian Ethnographic Museum. The garden's western side with a decorative fence faces another waterway,
a canal originally named after Catherine II who commissioned it, but after the 1917 revolution renamed in honour of the playwright Alexander Griboyedov. Next to the garden there stands a brightly coloured tall
church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood. This place of worship and now a museum was built in a traditional Russian style to mark the canalside spot on which
Emperor Alexander II who had
in 1861 abolished serfdom was
on 1 March 1881, assassinated by terrorists from the
Narodnaya Volya movement. towards the northern facade of the
Mikhailovsky Palace , looking towards the south. The course of the
Moyka River and the
Rossi Pavilion in the foreground, and the
Mikhailovsky Palace in the background. The
Church of the Saviour on Blood is visible to the right of the picture.
Royal Stables and eponymous square The Mikhailovsky Garden's western side is next to the Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood and a degree college named Higher School of Folk Arts (crafts), originally founded by Empress Alexandra, the wife of Russia's last Emperor, and facing a waterway that starts here off Moyka -
Griboyedov Canal, across which westwards there is a square formed chiefly by two buildings of the former Royal
Mews and named after them together with two adjoining streets Konyushennaya. The
carriage house faces the square while the neoclassical
stable also runs along the Moyka.
National Museum of Alexander Pushkin and his memorial last apartment at 12 Moyka Embankment Printing Museum at the former Lenin's typography Palace Square and the State Choir Capella Stroganov Palace Alexander Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University main campus The 18th-century estate of Count Razumovsky with its palace and outbuildings was converted towards the end of the century into a royal charity - an orphanage that for the first time in national history gave shelter to children born out of wedlock, whose mothers could anonymously leave them in a basket supervised by the gatekeeper. They were nurtured and given general and vocational training and, if born to serfs, were set free from submission to landlords of their parents. Its mascot was the pelican, once believed to sacrifice itself nursing its young. The bird is now on the crest of the city's large
teacher-training university located in the former estate. Giving multilevel higher education at its colleges (faculties and institutes) grouped by school subjects and administrative spheres, in the 1990s it was recognised as having national importance. Named in the Soviet times after the 19th-century Russian liberal thinker and writer
Alexander Herzen. The main campus has about 20 buildings occupying a large city block, while some colleges of the university are scattered around the city. Sankt Petersburg Paedagogische-Universitaet-Gertsen c4 Verwaltung a.jpg Razumovskypalace.jpg The Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia (38933538481).jpg 3334. St. Petersburg. Razumovsky Palace.jpg
Red Bridge trade centre Saint Isaac's Square Saint Isaac Square.jpg|
Saint Isaac of Dalmatia's Cathedral and horseback
monument to Emperor
Nicholas I of Russia, Astoria Hotel on the right Spb Views from Isaac Cathedral May2012 09.jpg | View from the Cathedral towards
Grand Princess Maria's Palace housing
Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly Count Yusupovs' Moika Palace The Central Naval Museum New Holland island Musin-Pushkin House on the Moyka River == See also ==