Monument to the Horse Tram

On the 6th Line of Vasilyevsky Island in St Petersburg, at the continuation of Andreyevsky Boulevard near Sredny Prospekt, stands a monument to the horse tram (konka) — a recreated horse-drawn railway carriage complete with figures of the horses and driver. The composition recalls a form of urban transport without which everyday life for St Petersburg residents would have been unthinkable throughout the second half of the 19th century.

The city's first passenger horse-tram line began operating on 27 August 1863, connecting Admiralty Square with the 6th Line of Vasilyevsky Island via Konnogvardeisky Boulevard. Vasilyevsky Island received more horse-tram routes than any other district of pre-revolutionary St Petersburg, and the carriages, each designed to carry 24 passengers, remained the main form of public transport for its residents for decades.

The monument was created gradually, in several stages. In 2004 the carriage itself was installed on the boulevard, reconstructed from surviving drawings of the Putilov Works — the factory that produced such trams between 1872 and 1878. The bright blue body was initially used as a theatre and airline ticket booth, with a ticket window built directly into the carriage wall. A year later, on 24 October 2005, bronze figures of harnessed horses by sculptor Akhnaf Ziyakayev, made of concrete and plastic, appeared beside the carriage. The composition was completed on 30 May 2009, when a team of craftsmen led by Ivan Penteshin installed the figure of the driver on the coachman's box.

A memorial plaque by the monument explains that the model replica of the horse tram was built according to drawings preserved in the factory archive and accurately reproduces the appearance of historic late-19th-century carriages. The monument's location on Vasilyevsky Island was no accident — it was here that one of the first routes of this mode of transport, the predecessor of the modern St Petersburg tram, once ran.

Today the monument to the horse tram remains one of the most recognisable landmarks of the 6th and 7th Lines of Vasilyevsky Island: tourists and city residents alike enjoy taking photographs beside the brightly coloured carriage. The composition has blended organically into the appearance of the island's historic quarter, recalling the urban transport of the century before last against the backdrop of the surviving pre-revolutionary buildings along the lines.

The monument to the horse tram is a rare example in St Petersburg of a memorial dedicated not to a particular person or event, but to an entire era of transport. The three successive stages of its creation, spread over five years, reflect the care with which contemporary sculptors and historians approached the recreation of the smallest details of a vanished way of urban life.