Rumyantsev Garden

On University Embankment on Vasilyevsky Island lies a shady rectangular garden with clipped corners — a quiet green retreat covering 1.35 hectares, at the centre of which rises a granite obelisk. Despite its modest size, this plot of land holds several layers of the city's history, from the age of Peter the Great to the present day.

In the early decades of the eighteenth century, the Menshikov Market traded here, next to the estate of His Serene Highness Prince Menshikov himself. The site was later used as a construction yard during the building of the Academy of Arts, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had become the parade ground of the First Cadet Corps, which was housed in the former Menshikov Palace chambers. It was on this very parade ground that, in 1818, a monument appeared that would determine the site's future name.

The obelisk, dedicated to the victories of Field Marshal Pyotr Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774, was designed by the architect Vincenzo Brenna and originally erected on the Field of Mars in 1799. The four-sided granite stele, set on a stepped pedestal of pink and grey marble, is crowned with a gilded sphere bearing an eagle with outstretched wings. In 1818 the architect Carlo Rossi moved the monument to Vasilyevsky Island, and the square around it came to be known as Rumyantsev Square.

The garden proper was laid out here only in 1865–1866, largely with funds provided by Stepan Solovyov, a member of the city duma, to a design by the architect Nikolai Kovrigin. The grounds were enclosed with an ornamental cast-iron railing cast at Franz San Galli's factory, and two fountains of French workmanship were installed among the tree-lined walks. A proposal was made to name the garden after Solovyov in recognition of his donation, but it never received the Emperor's approval. In 1927 the garden master Robert Katzer somewhat simplified and reworked the original planting layout.

During the Soviet period, from 1939 to 2001, the square bore the name of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, who had studied nearby at the Academy of Arts — the earlier name was deemed inappropriate amid the wave of renamings of that era. The historical name was restored in May 2001. A year earlier, in 1999, bronze busts of the painters Ilya Repin and Vasily Surikov appeared in the garden, and in 2002–2003 the fountains, railings, music pavilion, paths and lawns underwent a thorough restoration.

Today the garden is home to lime, oak, ash, maple and willow trees, while the classical façades of the Academy of Arts and the former cadet school building form a coherent architectural setting around it. In the early twentieth century the poet Alexander Blok read his verse here to the St Petersburg public, and ever since the garden has kept its reputation as a quiet literary corner of Vasilyevsky Island — a place for unhurried walks away from the busy avenues.