Anichkov Bridge

The Anichkov Bridge spans the Fontanka River along the axis of Nevsky Prospect and is considered one of the most famous bridges in Saint Petersburg, despite its modest size. The first wooden bridge on this site was built as early as 1716 by decree of Peter the Great — the crossing was erected by an army engineering battalion under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Anichkov, whose name became attached to both the bridge and the surrounding settlement. Throughout the 18th century the bridge was repeatedly rebuilt in wood: it was widened, fitted with a drawbridge span, and in 1741 even reinforced to allow the passage of fourteen elephants presented to the Russian empress by the Persian shah. A stone three-span bridge with towers appeared in the 1780s, and the structure took on its present appearance in 1841, when engineers Ivan Buttatz and Andrei Reder built the existing brick arched bridge, faced with pink granite and fitted with an elegant cast-iron railing designed by architect Alexander Bryullov, echoing the pattern of the railing on Berlin's Palace Bridge.

The bridge's main fame rests on the sculptural groups "Taming of the Horse by Man" by Baron Pyotr Klodt. The sculptor began working on the theme as early as 1832, inspired by the famous "Horses of Marly" by the Frenchman Guillaume Coustou, and applied a method innovative for its time — studying equine anatomy from carcasses obtained at slaughterhouses. The four bronze groups on the bridge's pedestals were meant to depict, in sequence, as a viewer moved counterclockwise, four stages in the subjugation of a wild horse — from desperate struggle to complete submission to man. However, not all four statues could be cast at once: Nicholas I twice gave away the first castings as gifts to foreign monarchs — the King of Prussia and the King of the Two Sicilies — and temporary plaster copies took their place. Only in 1851, after Klodt created two new compositions to replace the ones given away, did the bridge's ensemble finally take its intended form.

Klodt's sculptures brought their author European renown, and he was elected an honorary member of the Berlin and Roman Academies of Arts; casts of the works also adorned other residences, including the Belvedere at Peterhof. The bridge remained an important crossing for a century and a half, survived major repairs in the early 20th century and again in 2007–2008, and a memorial plaque on the pedestal of one of the groups still commemorates the shell hits it suffered during the Siege of Leningrad. Since 2001 the Anichkov Bridge has been under state protection as a cultural heritage site of federal significance.