English Embankment

English Embankment runs along the left bank of the Neva from Senate Square to the New Admiralty Canal, closing the chain of embankments on this side of the river. It came into being in the first half of the 18th century and changed its name several times, following the shifting fortunes of the capital.

The first name, given in 1738, reflected the position of this stretch of land downstream from the grand embankment on the opposite bank. Later, other names were also used colloquially — Isaakiyevskaya, after the church that once stood on the site of the present Bronze Horseman, and Galernaya, after the neighbouring shipyard. From the 18th century British merchants settled here and built their own church — hence the current name, which became fixed from 1829. After the revolution the embankment was renamed in honour of Baltic Fleet sailors; the historic name was restored only in 1994.

By house No. 44 stands a granite memorial marker showing where the cruiser Aurora was moored on the October night of 1917; it was erected in 1939 to a design by Alexander Gegello.

The embankment's grand architecture was shaped by the nobility and the empire's senior officialdom. One of its most striking ensembles is the complex of buildings for the Senate and Synod, erected in 1829–1834 by Carlo Rossi: two late-Classical blocks are linked by an arched passage thrown over Galernaya Street, and the facade facing the water is marked by a curved colonnade. The building later housed a historical archive, and since 2008 it has been home to the country's Constitutional Court. Nearby stands the mansion of Countess Laval, built in the 1790s by Andrei Voronikhin and soon after remodelled by Thomas de Thomon; its grand entrance is adorned with ten Ionic columns, and by the end of the 19th century the house belonged to the banking family of the Polyakovs.

Among the other buildings are the mansion of the manufacturer Casalet, rebuilt in the neo-Baroque style, the eclectic palace of the Paskevich princes, and the ancient Naryshkin chambers, later passed to the Vorontsov-Dashkov family. Notable among them is the house of Count Nikolai Rumyantsev, a collector and patron of the arts: the building took its present form in 1826–1827 to a design by the architect Vasily Glinka, its facade crowned by a large columned portico bearing a sculptural group on a mythological theme by Ivan Martos; today a museum operates there. Towards the end of the embankment stands an Anglican church, built by Giacomo Quarenghi in the 1810s for the local British community that gave the embankment its present name.

Today the embankment remains perhaps the most cohesive noble ensemble along the ceremonial bank of the Neva: almost every house here is linked to the name of a renowned architect, collector or banker of centuries past.