🏛 Palace Square

The city's main square between the Winter Palace and the arc of the General Staff Building with the Triumphal Arch.

From 1918 to 1944 the square was called Uritsky Square, after the head of the Petrograd Cheka, killed by the General Staff Building.
On 16 June 1766 Catherine II held a Carousel here — an equestrian festival-tournament with Rinaldi's wooden amphitheater seating several thousand.
The granite monolith of the Alexander Column is not fixed in any way and stays on its pedestal under its own weight alone.
In 1924 it was decided to replace the angel on the column with a figure of Lenin, but after a year of discussion the project was dropped.
The east side of the square is closed off by the Guards Corps headquarters, built by Alexander Bryullov in 1837–1843.
In 1932 the square's cobblestones were paved over with asphalt, and the diabase-cobble paving was restored only in 1977.
In autumn 1941 they seriously discussed making an airfield for fighters on the square by moving the column, but dropped the idea.