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.

The Hermitage

Snuff box carved by Peter I - Hermitage

We revisited today the Hermitage, which was in a great degree destroyed by fire some few years since, and is not got entirely rebuilt, still containing a very fine collection of paintings, and a most splendid suite of apartments, private and for public view.  In one of the many chambers, are several pieces of the work of Peter the Great, some carving in Ivory very [13] well executed, by this Imperial Jack of all Trades. The Palace of the Emperor, stands directly next to and in fact is connected with the Hermitage, and outwardly is the finest of any of the Palaces I have seen in Europe.  The size is immense, built of the various orders of Architecture, and all of (in appearance at least) the red sandstone that we use for the coping and/or Windows at home in brick houses. I say in appearance, for I have found out that the finest buildings in the city are almost entirely built of stucco, which however detracts nothing from its beauty, for they are all admirably styled and handsomely ornamented with bas-reliefs &c. &c.