Bronze Horseman

Interesting facts

The monument owes its famous name to Pushkin's 1833 poem, in which the statue comes alive and pursues a poor clerk through flooded streets.

According to local legend, the Thunder Stone got its name because a thunderbolt had once split a piece off the boulder.

Before shaping, the boulder is estimated to have weighed about 1,500 tonnes; it was trimmed to roughly 1,250 tonnes while on the move.

The transport of the stone was devised by Marinos Carburis, a Greek officer from Kefalonia who had trained as an engineer in Vienna.

Only about 100 metres of track were available, so it was constantly relaid ahead of the stone, yet the team covered over 150 metres a day on level ground.

The barge built to carry the Thunder Stone to the city had to be braced by two full-size warships, one on each side.

A commemorative medal struck for the stone's arrival in 1770 bore the motto "Close to Daring".

During the 900-day siege of Leningrad the statue was encased in sandbags and a wooden shelter and came through the bombardment almost untouched.

According to a 19th-century legend, enemies would never conquer the city as long as the Bronze Horseman remained standing in its square.

Diderot nicknamed Marie-Anne Collot "Mademoiselle Victoire"; she was only about 18 when she arrived in Russia with Falconet.

Why it is worth it

The Bronze Horseman is the equestrian statue of Peter the Great that has stood in Senate Square in Saint Petersburg since 1782, and it has become the emblem of the city. Catherine the Great commissioned it to bind her own claim to the throne to Peter's legacy, and the inscription on the pedestal says so in Latin and Russian: "Catherine the Second to Peter the First, 1782". On Denis Diderot's recommendation the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet came to Russia in 1766 to make it; Peter's face was modelled by his young pupil Marie-Anne Collot, using the tsar's death mask and portraits.

The statue shows Peter on a rearing horse at the edge of a cliff, his arm stretched towards the Neva, while the horse tramples a serpent read as treachery or the enemies of his reforms. The statue is about 6 m tall and stands on a pedestal of another 7 m. That pedestal is the real marvel: the Thunder Stone, a granite boulder found at Lakhta near the Gulf of Finland and said to be the largest stone ever moved by people. In 1768-1770 some 400 men dragged it over frozen ground on a sledge running on bronze balls, working without animals, while stonecutters shaped it on the move, before it was shipped to the city on a specially built barge.

The casting nearly failed when the mould broke and molten bronze started fires; the caster Emelyan Khailov stayed at his post and saved the work. Falconet himself left Russia after a quarrel with the empress and did not see the unveiling. The monument owes its popular name to Alexander Pushkin's 1833 poem The Bronze Horseman, in which a poor man who has lost his beloved in a Neva flood curses the statue of the tsar who built a city in such a place. During the 900-day siege of Leningrad it was protected under sandbags and a wooden shelter and survived almost unscathed.

Getting there

Senate Square lies on the left bank of the Bolshaya Neva, between the Admiralty and St Isaac's Cathedral in central Saint Petersburg. Pulkovo Airport (LED) is about 15 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Bronze Horseman is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was opened to the public on 18 August [O.S. 7 August] 1782. Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet. The statue influenced an 1833 poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, which is widely considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature. The statue is now one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg.

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Bronze Horseman

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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