Blagoveshchensky Bridge

Blagoveshchensky Bridge spans the Great Neva, linking Vasilyevsky Island with the Admiralty side of the city — it was the first permanent crossing over the river to appear in St Petersburg. Construction, to a design by the engineer Stanislav Kerbedz, went on from 1843 to 1850; Alexander Bryullov worked on its architectural appearance, while the American firm of Winans, Harrison and Eastwick was brought in to assemble the metal structures, which had been manufactured in England. Seven arch spans made up the main part of the crossing, with the eighth — a bascule span — positioned close to the Vasilyevsky Island bank. At its opening the structure measured almost 300 metres in length, a figure that at the time had no equal among the world's cast-iron bridges. Its piers still rest on wooden piles — a foundation no other bridge across the Neva can claim today.

Over a century and a half the bridge has changed its name several times. During construction it was known as the Neva Bridge; at its opening in November 1850 it was named Blagoveshchensky, after the square that once stood beside it and the church, later demolished, that gave the square its name. Following the death of Nicholas I the bridge was renamed Nikolayevsky, and in 1918 it took the name of Pyotr Schmidt, the revolutionary officer who led the uprising aboard the cruiser Ochakov in 1905. Its historic name was restored only in 2007. It was beside this very crossing that the cruiser Aurora dropped anchor in the autumn of 1917: with the ship's guns trained on them, the guards abandoned their post and sailors closed the raised span, after which, that evening, a blank shot rang out — an event widely held to have signalled the storming of the Winter Palace.

In the late 1930s the engineer Grigory Peredery completely rebuilt the crossing as a girder structure, moving the bascule span to the middle of the channel; during assembly, electric welding was used instead of rivets for the first time on this scale in Russian practice. The new form proved less striking than the old one. The historic composition was recreated during a major reconstruction in 2005–2007, when the width of the carriageway was increased to 37 metres and the spans were replaced anew, styled after 19th-century trusses. Of particular artistic value is the railing, decorated with figures of sea horses and tridents — since 1990 it, together with the lamps and the pavilions housing the bascule mechanism, has been protected by the state as a monument of regional significance.