Mikhailovsky Garden
Catherine's palace, on the banks of the Moyka River, was known as the Golden Mansion, and the surrounding land was developed by Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as a garden both for pleasure, and to provide supplies for the imperial household.
The next large scale redevelopment took place in the 1810s when Emperor Alexander I commissioned a new palace complex for his younger brother, Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich from architect Carlo Rossi.
The Mikhailovsky Palace, named for its occupant, was completed in 1825 to the south of the garden, which was also substantially redeveloped as part of an ensemble that included the land to the north across the Field of Mars and as far as the Neva River.
Assisted by Adam Menelaws, Rossi introduced the style and techniques of English landscape gardens, creating a large irregular oval meadow with alleyways, while the ponds were reshaped into more natural meandering outlines.
Children's play areas, tennis courts and public toilets were built on its grounds, while tree planting was carried out haphazardly, eventually blocking important sightlines around the ensemble.
[2] The area now partly occupied by the Mikhailovsky Garden, prior to the region's conquest by the Russians and the founding of Saint Petersburg, was the site of various rural settlements.
[1] Le Blond's plan, personally approved by Peter the Great, envisaged a single large palace and park ensemble that was to include the imperial residences and gardens.
[1][4] "French-Italian cellars" were also located in the grounds, providing storage space for imported wines and other foodstuffs, while 50 nightingales were brought to the garden from Moscow, Pskov and Novgorod Governorates.
[3] In his diary entry of 11 July 1721, kamer-junker Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholz recorded that bananas and pineapples had been successfully grown in the garden.
[1][3] A number of farm buildings, stables, barns and servants' quarters were laid out in the grounds of the palace, while Catherine ordered the laying out of pathways along the Moyka and Fontanka.
[4] The garden was redesigned with a more regular layout with longitudinal and transverse avenues, and with trees trimmed into geometric shapes, with added sculptures, ponds, flower beds and pavilions.
[3] Shortly after Emperor Paul's accession to the throne in 1796, he ordered the demolition of Empress Elizabeth's Summer Palace and its replacement with the Mikhailovsky Castle, which was finally completed in 1801.
[1][4] The land around the Mikhailovsky Castle was also redeveloped under the scheme, approved by Alexander in 1823, and involving the filling in of the Church Canal and part of the garden's eastern ornamental pond.
[4] The garden facade of the Mikhailovsky Palace looked out over a large irregular oval meadow, bordered by alleyways and laid out in a grid pattern.
In the north of the garden, on the banks of the Moyka and on the site of Catherine's Golden Mansion, Rossi designed a pavilion and pier intended "for romantic meetings on summer evenings over a cup of tea or playing cards".
[3] On 1 March 1881, Emperor Alexander II was assassinated by members of Narodnaya Volya while travelling along the Catherine Canal embankment beside the Mikhailovsky Garden.
The church took up part the western edge of the garden, and was separated from it by an Art Nouveau-style fence designed by Alfred Parland and created by Karl Vinkler [ru] between 1903 and 1907.
[3] The redevelopment of the palace complex in the early 1900s, with the construction of the museum's ethnographic department, reduced the size of the garden slightly, while in 1902 the eastern pond was filled in.
[1] The garden suffered from the heavy bombing and shelling the city received during the Second World War, which destroyed trees and left craters in the grounds.
[3] The report in 2000 revealed the extensive damage done to the original design of the ensemble, and a plan was drawn up the following year by the State Institute for Architecture [ru] for the restoration of the garden.
