Alexander Park in St. Petersburg

2024 Author: Harold Hamphrey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:06

One of the oldest parks in the city is located on the Petrograd side of the northern capital. Architects were instructed to start creating it during the reign of Emperor Alexander the First. But real work on the arrangement of the park began already under Nikolai, who replaced him. During this period of the history of the Russian state, the famous Peter and Paul Fortress, from which St. Petersburg once began, managed to completely lose its military significance. And Alexander Park is located on its glacis - this is how the professional language of military engineers called the mandatory open space in front of the fortifications, which should be well shot from the walls and towers.

Alexander Park: planning and architecture

The opposite part of the Peter and Paul Fortress from the Neva is called Kronverk. It was the geometry of this fortification that determined what Alexander Park looks like today. Its radial alleys converge to the Kronverk of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Such an arrangement was very typical for the capital of the Russian Empire, where there are very few accidents, and everything is subject to strictgeometry. It remains only to regret that later the plan of the architects was violated, and the Alexander Park in St. Petersburg has survived to this day in a greatly transformed form.

Usually, such disregard for historically established layouts is typical of the Soviet era, but in this case it began at the turn of the twentieth century. Painfully attractive was an open place almost in the very center of the capital. And Alexander Park has lost its former integrity of its layout, having undergone unsystematic building, the characteristic elements of which were such buildings as the Orthopedic Institute and the People's House. And later, already in the thirties of the twentieth century, the Lenin Komsomol Theater, now known as the B altic House, was added to them. With this building, Aleksandrovsky Park turned out to be largely cut off from the embankment of the Kronverk Canal. But despite all the transformations that have happened to it over the two centuries of its existence, it has been preserved as the oldest green area in the center of St. Petersburg.

For many years it continues to be one of the favorite places for walks of both native St. Petersburg residents and numerous guests of the northern capital. In the early 2000s, a significant amount of work was carried out to improve the park and develop its engineering and technical infrastructure. The territory was cleared of foreign rubbish, a large number of trees and ornamental shrubs were planted.

Alexander Park. How to get there?

For a long period of time, the favorite place of the townspeople was sufficiently cut off from the city. But since 1963, the question of how to get to Alexander Park has ceased to be relevant. The Gorkovskaya metro station of the Moscow-Petrogradskaya line appeared right on its territory.