Alexander Column

The Alexander Column stands at the centre of Palace Square, completing the architectural ensemble around the General Staff Building. The Empire-style monument was erected by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand on the orders of Nicholas I, to honour the emperor's elder brother, Alexander I, and his victory over Napoleon. Today the monument belongs to the museum collection of the State Hermitage Museum.

The idea for a monument crowned with the figure of an angel was first suggested by the Prussian king Frederick William IV, and an open competition was announced in 1829. Montferrand initially proposed a granite obelisk over 33 metres tall, but was given to understand that what was wanted was a column taller than the Vendôme Column in Paris. He took as his models the Roman columns of Trajan and Antoninus, as well as Pompey's Pillar in Alexandria, reproducing their pedestal and base almost without change. The project was approved on 24 September 1829.

The granite monolith for the shaft was quarried in 1830–1832 at Pyuterlaks, near Vyborg, under the direction of the master craftsmen Kolodkin and Yakovlev, using Sukhanov's method. The 613-tonne block was shipped to the capital aboard a specially built barge, the Svyatoy Nikolay, which arrived at Palace Embankment on 1 July 1832. By that time the foundation on the square, resting on one and a half thousand piles, was already complete. To hoist the shaft onto its pedestal, scaffolding 47 metres high with a system of sixty capstans was built to calculations by the engineer Betancourt; on 30 August 1832, two thousand soldiers and four hundred workers raised the monolith into place in just an hour and a quarter, watched by the imperial family and a crowd of townspeople.

The shaft, carved from a single block of pink granite, measures 25.6 metres, while the monument's total height with pedestal, capital and figure reaches 47.5 metres, making it the tallest monument in the world made from a single piece of stone. The pedestal is decorated with bronze bas-reliefs depicting ancient Russian weaponry — chainmail and helmets associated with the names of Alexander Nevsky and Yermak, and the armour of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The column is crowned by the figure of an angel by the sculptor Boris Orlovsky, holding a cross in one hand while the other is raised toward the sky, with a defeated serpent underfoot. According to one version, the angel's features resemble Alexander I; according to another, the poetess Elizaveta Kulman. A restoration carried out in the early 2000s revealed that the sculpture is held in place on its pedestal by its own weight alone, without any hidden supports.

The monument was solemnly unveiled on 30 August 1834, the feast day of Alexander Nevsky; the ceremony was attended by Nicholas I and his family, foreign diplomats, and a hundred-thousand-strong military force, after which a military parade took place on the square.