Yusupov Garden

Between the Fontanka River and Sadovaya Street in St Petersburg's Admiralteysky district lies Yusupov Garden — one of the city's oldest private parks, which became public as far back as the century before last. Its nine hectares of greenery preserve the memory not only of its aristocratic owners, but also of the birth of Russian figure skating.

Peter I granted the land here to Prince Grigory Yusupov in 1724. His son laid out a formal French-style park on the site: he had two ponds dug, canals laid, and flowerbeds planted, and in 1730 a single-storey wooden house was built to a design by Domenico Trezzini. In the 1790s Nikolai Yusupov invited architect Giacomo Quarenghi, who rebuilt the palace and redesigned the garden. In 1810, following the owners' divorce, the estate was sold to the treasury, and the property passed under the administration of the Directorate of Ways of Communication.

The new owners installed greenhouses and fountains in the park, erected a cast-iron railing along Sadovaya Street, and set up in the north-east the hothouses of the gardener Eilers, whose flowers were considered the finest in St Petersburg. In the spring of 1863, by order of Alexander II, part of the garden was opened to the general public: the grounds were divided into a southern section, with ponds and islands connected by chain bridges, and a northern section, each fitted with its own fountain.

Once opened to the public, the garden quickly became a place of entertainment: hot-air balloons were launched here, a shooting gallery operated, and from 1865, when the territory was leased for the winter by the St Petersburg River Yacht Club, skating rinks were flooded and snow forts were built. It was on the ice of Yusupov Garden, on 7–8 February 1896, that the seventh World Speed Skating Championships were held, won by the Dutchman Jaap Eden, and the very next day the world's first ever figure skating championship took place here. The same tournaments were hosted here twice more, in 1903 and 1908, and from 1878 until the outbreak of the First World War, Russian national championships were held on this ice; Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin, who became Russia's first Olympic champion, trained at the local figure skating school.

In the Soviet era the park was called the “Children's Park of the October District,” and in the 1950s a monument to Lenin by Sergei Merkurov was installed there, replaced in 1955 by a sculpture by David Schwartz. The garden's historic name was restored in 1990, and the monument to Lenin was dismantled five years later. Today the territory belongs to Emperor Alexander I St Petersburg State Transport University.

Yusupov Garden remains living proof of how an aristocratic family's estate park was transformed into a public urban space that gave rise to an entire sport. The combination of its historic layout, Quarenghi's ponds and its sporting heritage makes this garden a notable exception among St Petersburg's parks.