CITY LEGENDS

A monument to Alexander the Third

The Petersburg public did not test such joyful excitation for a long time. The most severe lessons of the Russian-Japanese war. Defeat of revolution of 1905. Gloomy reaction...

And suddenly in the capital centre, at entrance to it from Moscow by rail, on one of the central city areas - a heavy figure of the tsar nailed to a coffin-like pedestal.

Scandal has burst almost at once. The society has broken up. Reaction was indignant.

The municipal duma had to deal with a question on the right of a statue on existence. And only the author of a monument, Paolo Trubetskoj, the Italian citizen who was brought up far from "an all-seeing eye", laughed the matter off: "I do not politicise, I have represented one animal on other".

Paolo Trubetskoj has arrived to Russia in 1897 by the invitation to teach in the Moscow school of painting, sculpturing and architecture. He has taken part in competition on monument creation to the tzar Alexandet III died for five years before.

Having won, the sculptor has started creation of an image, yet without assuming that will execute 1 4 variants of model before will achieve not only portrait similarity, but also completeness of the internal maintenance which have personified the most gloomy period of the Russian history of the end of the century.

In 1937, in connection with reconstruction of the area and a lining of tram ways by Nevsky prospectus a monument have removed and, considering its high art value, have transferred to Russian museum. It was stored in a court yard of a museum and during blockade hardly was not lost.

Source: N.A. Sindalovsky "Legends of St. Petersburg"