Monument to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

On Tsiolkovsky Street in the city's Admiralteysky District, not far from the Obvodny Canal and the square in front of Baltiysky station, stands a granite monument to Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, the self-taught scientist regarded as the founder of theoretical cosmonautics. The monument takes the form of a massive figure that appears to have been hewn straight from a fragment of rock, and remains one of the city's most imposing granite monuments in terms of the sheer volume of stone used.

The idea of commemorating the scientist specifically on this street arose ahead of St Petersburg's tercentenary, but production of the monument was delayed and the unveiling had to be postponed. The monument was installed in September 2005, with the ceremony timed to coincide with Tsiolkovsky's birthday. It was a gift to the city from the scientific-production company Tekhnolog. The unveiling was attended by the scientist's great-granddaughter, Elena Timoshenkova, who heads the Tsiolkovsky house-museum in Kaluga. The team of authors was led by the sculptor Livon Beibutyan, while the architects Olga Glazova, Igor Zabolotsky and several other specialists worked on the design of the memorial site.

The figure of the scientist is carved from a single block of grey granite quarried near Vyborg — the monument has no separately worked parts or fittings. Tsiolkovsky is shown full-length, seated, with the raw, unworked mass of stone from which the figure rises serving as a kind of chair; an open book lies on his knees. The monument is about four metres long and two and a half metres high, and the block of stone weighs up to 25 tonnes. It stands on a raised, semicircular platform paved with granite slabs bearing images of astronomical signs and symbols, reached by a short flight of steps.

The street itself follows the course of the Tarakanovka River, filled in during the early 20th century, and was known as Tarakanovskaya Street from 1907. It was renamed after Tsiolkovsky in 1952, several decades after the scientist's death in 1935, while a boulevard had already been laid out along the roadway back in 1932, to a design by the architect Vladimir Danilov. The monument's proximity to Baltiysky station and to the industrial Admiralteysky District, home in Soviet times to precision-engineering plants, symbolically links the legacy of a scientist whose calculations underpinned rocket technology with the history of the city's industry.

Today the monument can be viewed around the clock, without restriction, and the square around it serves as a local landmark of the district, one little known to the tourist routes of the city centre. Set against the industrial buildings of the Obvodny Canal, this granite sculpture is a rare example in St Petersburg of a monument without a single bronze or metal element.

The monument on the street that bears his name is an example of urban sculpture dedicated not to a historical statesman or military commander but to a scientist whose ideas about space travel seemed pure fantasy in his own lifetime. Situated away from the tourist trail, it remains part of the district's local history and a reminder of Russian science's contribution to the study of space.