Admiralty Square and the equestrian statue of Peter the Great

The Admiralty, designed by Adrian Zakharov (viewed in 1996)

The City is truly on a grand scale and presents a bold and handsome appearance, every house in it being [white?] I believe with the exception of the palace. The Admiralty occupies the whole of an immense square and is a very regular and handsomely built edifice, larger I should suppose than any other one building in Petersburg. [14] Our part of the Admiralty faces a large & fair open square. (Most villainously paved however) with the Senate and Synod houses on the opposite side, the third side being formed by the River and the fourth by a very fine church now being built, and intending to rival the largest churches on the Continent. In the center of this square stands the celebrated bronze Equestrian statue to Peter the Great, raised to him by Catherine Secunda.  It is the largest of the kind I have yet seen and most admirably executed, possessing a very bold and Warlike.  Peter is represented as on horseback, his horse’s hoof at the same time crushing a serpent.  Unlike other statues of the kind generally, the horse is standing on his hind legs solely, with his body very much raised – consequently requiring an immense weight in the after part of the body.