Leningrad Zoo

Leningrad Zoo is one of the oldest zoological gardens in the country and the northernmost of the world's major zoos, located in the Petrogradsky District beside Kronversky Prospekt. Although not a single building from the pre-revolutionary menagerie has survived to the present day, the overall layout of the grounds has changed very little.

The garden opened in the summer of 1865; its first owners were the married couple Sofia and Julius Gebhardt, who assembled tigers, bears, a lioness and parrots. Some of the animals were gifts — a pair of elephants from India was presented by Emperor Alexander II, while sailors of the corvette Ryndа brought back a polar bear. From 1873 to 1897 the enterprise was run by Sofia's second husband, Ernst Rost: the collection grew to more than a thousand animals, and its upkeep was funded by income from a restaurant and a theatre operating on the grounds. Under Rost, detailed records were kept on every animal, and a guidebook was printed each year.

After Rost left for Germany due to illness, the enterprise fell into decline and closed in 1909. It was given a new lease of life in 1910 by the impresario and actor Sergei Novikov, who renovated the cages, the entrance and the pond for birds. Animals acquired at that time survived even the revolution — the elephant Betty died in an air raid in September 1941, while the hippopotamus Krasavitsa lived through the entire war.

After the revolution the enterprise was nationalised, a scientific council and a library were established, and in 1929 a young zoologists' club was formed that is still active today. From the early 1930s the zoo began regularly breeding polar bears — a rarity for the time, which is why this animal still graces the zoo's emblem. During the siege of the city, despite hunger and shelling, the staff managed to save some of the animals, achieved successful breeding and gave lectures out in the field; in summer the gates remained open to the city's residents. In memory of this feat the zoo was not renamed along with the city — it still bears the name Leningrad today, and a memorial plaque hangs at the entrance.

Restoration of the enterprise began in 1944 on the same site, and in 1952 the garden was renamed a zoo. By the mid-1960s its collection was among the largest in the USSR, but the buildings had fallen into disrepair, and a reconstruction begun in 1967 dragged on for decades: some animals had to be given away to other cities, including hippopotamuses, a rhinoceros and an African elephant. It was not until 1988 that eight new buildings were erected, and a terrarium begun in 1996 opened as the "Exotarium" only in 2007.

Today the pavilions are home to Amur tigers, lions and snow leopards, primates and sloths, giraffes and kangaroos, Japanese macaques and polar bears; the zoo also runs a "Birds of Prey Rock", a children's petting yard and an educational trail devoted to the region's fauna.