Saint Isaac's Square

Coordinates: 59°55′55″N 30°18′31″E / 59.93194°N 30.30861°E / 59.93194; 30.30861
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View from Mariinsky Palace on St. Isaac's Cathedral.
View from St. Isaac's Cathedral on Mariinsky Palace, 19th century
View from St. Isaac's Cathedral on Mariinsky Palace, 21st century

Saint Isaac's Square or Isaakiyevskaya Ploshchad (

Senate Square. The square is graced by the equestrian Monument to Nicholas I
.

The

.

Opposite the

Moika River
, the bridge is usually perceived as the extension of the square, although in fact it forms a separate square, called Mariyinskaya. To the right from the bridge is so-called Neptune's Scale, with a granite top. This is a stele which marks water levels during major floods.

To the east of the cathedral is the six-storey

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
, who lived there in 1848–1849. At this period, he published his first work of fiction, White Nights.

The Russian Institute of Plant Breeding named after Academician Nikolai Vavilov is located in two neo-Renaissance buildings. The institute has a unique collection of 160,000 cultivated plants, which Vavilov collected while travelling in every continent from 1921 to 1940. After the end of the war, a journal published in London reported that Vavilov's collection was lost during the Siege of Leningrad. However, the report was false: although many starved to death, the institute's staff would not consume a single grain of rice or potato tuber from the collection.[3]

One of the last buildings to be erected on the square was the trapezoidal red-granite

German Embassy (1911–12), by the architect Peter Behrens. The building is a reference point in the history of Western architecture, as it was the first specimen of Stripped Classicism, a style that enjoyed immense popularity in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.[4]

See also

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59°55′55″N 30°18′31″E / 59.93194°N 30.30861°E / 59.93194; 30.30861