The Stroganov Palace Garden
Authentic information concerning precise date and circumstances of creating internal yard is not available in archive sources. Specialists date the garden appearance from not early than 1908.
For the first time it was reflected on the palace plan in 1925 after the palace expropriation when there was opened "the Stroganov Palace - museum" exposition that became the State Hermitage branch in 1925. At that time the garden was planted with chestnuts and in 1927 it was enclosed with metallic fence of simple geometric design that was later recreated in 1950s.
On the yard and garden territory are some sculptural works made from cast iron, marble, granite and limestone.
Cast iron figure pillars with lion masks that nowadays are near the palace arch in the 18th century were the palace fence elements from the Nevsky Prospect side. They have a great value for us as monument of artistic casts of the middle of the 18th century.
Granite sphinxes that decorate outhouse entrance by architect Charlemagne were transferred to Petersburg house yard from Stroganovs' dacha on the Chernaya Rechka that was built in the end of the 18th century by architect A Voronikhin.
From the dacha were also taken Flora and Neptune statues in 1908 according to order of the last palace owner S. A. Stroganov.
A number of architectural monuments of the 18th - 19th centuries were decorated with statues of Flora Farnese and Hercules: the Cameron Gallery, the Michael's (Engineers') Castle, the Academy of Art. This pair decorated the Stroganov dacha staircase. Thus one of the most fashionable decorative statues of the Classicism epoch has found shelter in the yard. Nowadays its pair is not Hercules but Neptune that once had decorated a fountain in the mentioned dacha.
Two marble vases in the craters' form came also from the Chernaya Rechka and aptly supplemented a small collection of character decorative landscape plastics.
Thus the palace public garden that has already appeared in the 20th century holds thanks to its sculptural decoration in remembrance the time when the well-to-do Stroganovs owned one of the largest and most poetic dachas in St. Petersburg.
In present we have carried out the project on creation the "Stroganov Yard" season cafe. The Russian Museum partner is Petersburg private restaurant firm "Concord Management and Consulting". Moderate prices on cafe production cause social orientation on consumer with average income. Profitability is provided with genre variety of cafe activity forms: creating special ground for children with appropriate assortment and low prices, enlisting musicians with both classic repertoire and variety music, special ground with service of restaurant level, personnel's uniform etc.
Means from cafe activity will be supposed for further restoration both the garden and the Stroganov Palace.
Plan of the Stroganov Palace with the garden
- working out the plan of scientific restoration and the yard reconstruction;
- recreation of historical cobble paving with allotting zones for archaeological excavations and showing historical ground level;
- drainage and overflow setting;
- recreation of the garden fence;
- setting of season cafe.
Cost of the project - $ 1 200 000
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