Monument to Nicholas I

The bronze equestrian monument to Emperor Nicholas I stands on Saint Isaac's Square in Saint Petersburg — the Mariinsky Palace lies on one side of it, while the bulk of Saint Isaac's Cathedral rises on the other. Construction began in 1856, soon after the sovereign's death, and the unveiling took place on 25 June (7 July) 1859. The overall concept and the pedestal belong to the architect Auguste de Montferrand, while the equestrian statue itself, about six metres high, was cast by Baron Peter Klodt. The rider wears the parade uniform of the Life Guards Horse Regiment, which Nicholas commanded as its chief; the model for the horse was the stallion Amalatbek, the emperor's favourite.

The elliptical pedestal is faced with crimson Karelian quartzite and white Italian marble, while the lower plinth is finished in grey granite. The pedestal is surrounded by four bronze female figures by the sculptor Robert Zaleman — personifications of Strength, Wisdom, Justice and Faith; their faces repeat the features of Alexandra Feodorovna, the tsar's wife, and his three daughters. Between two of the figures is fixed a gilded coat of arms with a dedicatory inscription and the date 1859. Four bas-reliefs on the pedestal depict episodes of the reign: the uprising on Senate Square in 1825, the cholera riot on Sennaya Square in 1831, Speransky's work on the codification of laws in 1832, and the launch of the Nikolaevsky Railway in 1851. The monument acquired its railing later, in the following decade.

Casting the statue took over 21 tonnes of metal, and the whole structure cost the treasury 753,000 silver roubles; the first casting failed — the metal burst through the mould, just as had happened earlier with the Bronze Horseman. Between the two equestrian statues of the tsars, facing in different directions, stands Saint Isaac's Cathedral — the monuments form a single axis running through the very centre of the city. The monument to Nicholas is considered a technical achievement of its era: the equestrian statue rests on only two points — the horse's hind legs — a rarity for European sculpture of the mid-19th century.

After the revolution the question of demolishing the monument was raised more than once, but its unique construction saved it — the monument was recognized as an engineering masterpiece. During the siege the figure was shielded from air raids, the railing was dismantled in the 1930s and restored only in 1991 at the "Monumentskulptura" plant using authentic fragments. In the summer of 2011 a night-time vandal, a watchman at a military cadet school, damaged the spear in the hand of one of the figures in order to take an unusual photograph — the detail was later restored. A restoration begun after a project was approved in 2020, prompted by cracks in the pedestal and corrosion of the bronze, was completed in November 2021.