Concrete Animals, Novoznamenka Baroque and Ponds

⏱ 1 h 40 min🚶 4.4 km🍽 0📍 3 stops

🚶 Moderate — 3–7 km

The ponds and concrete animals of South Primorsky Park, the Elizabethan Baroque of the Vorontsov dacha seen over the fence and a cascade of ponds on the Sosnovka river — a quiet estate-style outskirt.

🌳 Parks and nature🏘 Off the centre⏱ An hour or so

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps

1
🌳 Yuzhno-Primorsky Park
Петергофское ш. (главный вход с фонтанами)
A 1970s park with ponds and islets, formal avenues and Kiselyov's concrete animals in the children's playground.
Start at the tram stop; ponds and concrete animals.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Uz1awa · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Екатерина Борисова · CC BY-SA 4.0
- The 58-hectare park was laid out in 1960–1970 for Lenin's centenary under the architect A. G. Lelyakov.
- Until 1992 it was called the Yuzhno-Primorsky Park named after V. I. Lenin.
- The park was built on a marsh at the foot of the Littorina terrace.
- By design, the wide avenue was to lead out to the Gulf of Finland, but in the 2010s the northern edge was built over with apartment blocks.
- In November 1999 the 28-metre "Hammer and Sickle" monument was blown up here.
- In 2005 the inscription "100 Years of V. I. Lenin" on the monument at the entrance was replaced with "60 Years of Victory".
🚶 on foot
2
🏛 Novoznamenka Estate
ул. Чекистов, 13
A rare example of Elizabethan Baroque: Vorontsov's dacha, later Myatlev's "Novo-Znamenka".
Along Peterhofskoe Highway and Chekistov Street to the Baroque palace (over the fence) and the park.
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© Florstein (Telegram:WikiPhoto.Space) · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Florstein (Telegram:WikiPhoto.Space) · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov began building the estate in 1753; the first architect was Giuseppe Trezzini.
- On 17 August 1759 Empress Elizabeth stopped here for lunch on her way to Peterhof.
- Under the Naryshkins in the early 19th century the dacha was a centre of society life, and the imperial family visited.
- In 1866, while visiting the Myatlevs, Pyotr Tchaikovsky finished his First Symphony, "Winter Daydreams".
- From the 1890s there was a hospital for the mentally ill here; the writer Gleb Uspensky spent his last years and died in it.
- The fire of 1941 destroyed the interiors and brought down the balconies and the south façade; until the late 1950s the palace stood in ruins.
- Since 1991 the palace has housed the International Boarding School of the Herzen Institute.
🚶 on foot
3
🌳 Sosnovaya Polyana Park
пр. Ветеранов (вход с северной стороны)
The former landscape park of the Vorontsov dacha with a cascade of ponds on the Sosnovka stream.
The cascade of ponds on the Sosnovka.
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© Katerina SPb · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Spb.Terminator · CC BY-SA 4.0
- At the turn of the 19th century the Sosnovka stream was turned into a chain of ponds.
- In the early 19th century under A. L. Naryshkin a landscape park with canals and diagonal paths was laid out in the southern part of the estate.
- In the war German artillery batteries stood in the park, and the conifer forest suffered badly.
- In the 1970s the park was slated for clearing for development — schoolchildren saved it by forming human chains.
- In the early 21st century the park's historic layout was restored.