Old postcards Leningradsky Zoo

Leningrad Zoo traces its history to a zoological garden opened in 1865 in Alexander Park, which makes it one of the oldest zoos in Russia and one of the northernmost in the world. It kept working throughout the siege of Leningrad: keepers saved part of the collection, and in summer the garden still admitted visitors. In spring 1944 it reopened for regular visits, and restoration began on the old grounds.

The 1968 set is a gallery of the zoo’s residents: a scarlet macaw, an orangutan, polar bears, Asian elephants, a tiger, a lion, a tapir, a zebra, a rhinoceros and a nerpa seal. The captions give only the animal and the year, with no enclosure names or nicknames, so the set reads more as a wildlife series than as a guide to the zoo.

These vintage postcards of Leningrad Zoo suit collectors of animal themes as well as local historians, since the set shows which animals were chosen for a zoo series at the end of the 1960s. Polar bears and the nerpa stand for the northern side of the collection, next to the tropical species.