Old postcards Summer garden

Peter I ordered the Summer Garden to be laid out in 1704 on an island bounded by the Neva, the Fontanka, the Moika and the Swan Canal. Domenico Trezzini built the Summer Palace of Peter I here in 1710–1714, and the avenues were lined with marble statues by Italian sculptors of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The garden’s fountains were destroyed by the flood of 1777 and were not rebuilt at the time.

The section holds two sets of vintage postcards, dated 1969 and 1971. Statues often appear in pairs: Aurora and Midday, Evening and Night, Navigation and Architecture; there are also the groups Peace and Abundance and Cupid and Psyche, the bust Day and a weeping vase. The 1971 set covers more ground: the Coffee House, which Carlo Rossi rebuilt from the Grotto pavilion in 1826, the Elfdalen Vase given to Nicholas I by King Charles XIV John of Sweden in 1839, the Upper Swan Bridge, the Swan Canal, the Fontanka, the garden in autumn and its old trees.

The railing on the Neva side, designed by Yuri Felten with Pyotr Yegorov and built in 1771–1784, is in both sets, and the 1971 set adds the South Gate and fence. Anyone looking for a picture of the Summer Garden railing to draw or compare will find two versions here.

Pyotr Klodt’s monument to the fabulist Ivan Krylov, unveiled in 1855, also turns up twice, two years apart.