Peter's Landing Stage (Petrovskaya Embankment pier)

Peter's Landing Stage, or the Petrovsky Descent, is a granite stairway down to the Neva on Admiralteyskaya Embankment in Saint Petersburg, next to the western wing of the Admiralty building, closer to Senate Square. It is one of the oldest mooring structures in the historic centre, having preserved its appearance from the first quarter of the 19th century, and is known for the decorative porphyry vases set upon it.

The descent was built in 1820–1824 to a design by the military engineer Andrei Danilovich Gotman — at the same time as the Palace Landing Stage, designed by the architect Carlo Rossi at the point where the Palace Drive meets the river, closer to the Winter Palace. The structure took its name from the neighbouring square, which was known in those years as Petrovskaya Square. The square itself was later renamed several times — to Senate Square, then Decembrists' Square, and back to Senate Square — whereas the name of the landing stage has never changed since it was built, and became permanently fixed to it.

The landing stage is a broad granite stairway of two flights with a landing between them, built of dressed blocks of pink rapakivi granite; the descent is bordered on either side by a low parapet continuing the line of the embankment. On pedestals on either side of the stairway stand two vases of polished porphyry — more precisely, of a rock that specialists call asbo-diabase. The vases were a gift to the Russian imperial court from the King of Sweden: they were carved at a stone-cutting works in Älvdalen, Sweden, and arrived in the Russian capital in 1830. The cast-iron bases beneath the vases, decorated with volutes, were made to a design by the architect Ludwig Charlemagne.

Originally the vases stood at the Tauride Palace, and in 1832 they were installed, together with the lions, at the Palace Landing Stage as an ornament to the embankment. Four decades later, when the military engineers Vladislav Karlovich and Semyon Selyaninov were carrying out work to create a continuous granite embankment on the stretch from the Winter Palace to the Admiralty, the vases were moved to the Petrovsky Descent, where they remain today. The bronze lions, however, stayed at the neighbouring landing stage and were later, during the construction of the Palace Bridge, shifted closer to the eastern wing of the Admiralty.

Peter's Landing Stage is still used for its original purpose today — as a mooring point for pleasure boats setting off along the Neva and the rivers of the city centre. The structure is included in the list of federally protected cultural heritage sites. Over time the stone of the vases has suffered from Saint Petersburg's climate: in 2005 the western vase was removed from its pedestal owing to damage, and the eastern one in 2013. Both were restored in the Naslediye ("Heritage") workshop, and in May 2014 they were returned to the historic spots they have now occupied for a century and a half.

Together with the Palace Landing Stage and the ceremonial buildings along the embankment, Peter's Landing Stage forms one of the recognisable views of the Neva's bank opposite the Admiralty. Simple in form, this granite structure remains a monument to the engineering art of its era and a working part of the city embankment that links Saint Petersburg to the river.