Lion Bridge

The Lion Bridge spans the Griboyedov Canal in the Admiralteysky District, connecting Kazansky Island with Spassky Island and linking Lviny Lane with Malaya Podyacheskaya Street. It is one of three surviving early-nineteenth-century chain pedestrian bridges in St Petersburg, alongside the Bank Bridge and the Post Office Bridge; the structure is recognised as a cultural heritage site of federal significance. The bridge takes its name from the four cast-iron lions by the sculptor Pavel Sokolov installed at its corners; in nineteenth-century documents it was referred to as the "Bridge of the Four Lions," and until 1912 other names were also in use — Mariinsky and Theatre Pedestrian Bridge, after the neighbouring lane and square.

The crossing was designed by the engineers Tretter and Christianovich at the same time as the Bank Bridge — both projects were approved on 18 February 1825, and construction began that same summer. A delay in the manufacture of metal components at Berd's factory pushed assembly back to the following spring, and traffic across the bridge opened on 1 July 1826. The lion figures were made in parallel, between May and September 1825: they were cast in iron at the Alexandrovsky Foundry and, unlike the gilded griffins of the Bank Bridge, were painted with matte white paint to imitate marble.

Over nearly two centuries the structure has been repeatedly renewed: in 1882 the wooden elements were replaced and the elegant cast-iron railings were exchanged for simpler wrought-iron ones, while the embankment was raised together with the lions' pedestals at the same time; in 1948 the engineer Yanovsky replaced the span's wooden beams with metal ones, and in 1954 the historical appearance of the railings, lamps and the white paint of the sculptures was restored. A major overhaul involving the replacement of beams and restoration of the figures took place in 1999–2000, and the lions were restored again in 2018.

The bridge's fame spread beyond the city: in 1838 the Borsig company, to a design by the architect Ludwig Hesse, built a scaled-down copy of it, just over 17 metres long, in Berlin's Tiergarten park — the German capital's first suspension bridge, which has preserved its wooden deck and railings to this day. Today's St Petersburg bridge is a single-span beam structure in which the chains serve a purely decorative function; its length is 22.4 metres, and the width between the railings is 2.28 metres.