Mikhailovsky Garden

The Mikhailovsky Garden is one of the best-known parks in the historic centre of St Petersburg, bounded by Sadovaya Street, the River Moika and the Griboyedov Canal. To its south stand the Mikhailovsky Palace (the main building of the Russian Museum), the Ethnographic Museum and the Benois Wing, while the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood rises at its north-western edge. The garden is managed by the State Russian Museum.

The site was given recreational status under Peter I and was originally known as the Third Summer Garden, to distinguish it from two other royal gardens nearby. From 1712 a residence was built here for Peter's wife, Catherine I, known as the "Golden Chambers" — a wooden palace with a gilded spire. At that time the garden extended far beyond its present boundaries, from the Moika to Nevsky Prospekt, and included fruit trees along with hothouses growing pineapples and banana palms.

Under Anna Ioannovna part of the garden was set aside as a "Jagdgarten" — a ground for royal hunting of deer and wild boar — while the rest was redesigned at the empress's order in the formal French style by the architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli, with cross-shaped avenues, marble statues, a labyrinth and a bathing pavilion on the Moika. In 1741 a wooden Summer Palace was erected on the site of what would become Mikhailovsky Castle, and in 1797–1800, by order of Paul I, the stone Mikhailovsky Castle was built there to a design by Vasily Bazhenov and Vincenzo Brenna — the garden's landscape changed once again, with moats appearing along with Konnetabl Square and its monument to Peter I. After Paul's assassination in 1801 the castle was soon handed over to the Corps of Engineers.

In 1825 the architect Carlo Rossi built a garden pavilion and landing stage on the Moika on the foundations of the former "Golden Chambers" — in its pair of square halls, with a Doric colonnade, tea was taken and card games played; the pavilion was positioned on the axis of the Field of Mars, linking that ensemble with the garden. In 1907 part of the garden's territory was taken up by the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood and a new stretch of embankment along the Griboyedov Canal that curved around the cathedral; at the same time the architect Alfred Parland designed a cast-iron fence for this section. In the 1920s, when tram tracks were laid through the garden, some sections of the fence were moved, and in the 1990s two sections near the church disappeared and were replaced by a temporary railing.

In 2000 an inventory revealed the critical condition of the garden's plantings, and from 2001 the garden was completely reconstructed. Since its restoration, the garden has hosted an annual landscape design festival, "The Imperial Gardens of Russia", bringing together both professional and amateur gardeners.