Bronze Horseman

Stand at the edge of the square and listen. Behind you, traffic hums along the embankment. In front of you, the wind comes off the Neva, cold and wide, carrying the smell of river water and wet stone. And there, rising from a great wave of granite, a rider in bronze holds back a rearing horse at the very edge of a cliff. You are looking at the Bronze Horseman, the statue of Peter the Great that has watched over Saint Petersburg since the eighteenth century.

The man on the horse founded this city. In the early eighteenth century, Peter the First decided that Russia needed a window onto Europe. He chose marshy, flood-prone land at the mouth of the Neva and ordered a capital built there. Thousands of labourers died draining and building on it. So the statue stands close to where the city's story began, near the river, the Admiralty, and the old seat of government.

The monument was not commissioned by Peter himself. It came decades later, from Catherine the Great. Catherine was a German-born princess who took the Russian throne in a palace coup. She wanted to present herself as Peter's true heir. Walk around to the side of the granite and you will see her message carved into it. In Russian on one side and Latin on the other, it reads, in plain words: to Peter the First from Catherine the Second.

For the sculpture, Catherine turned to France. The sculptor was Étienne Maurice Falconet, recommended to her through her correspondence with the French philosopher Denis Diderot. Falconet spent many years in Saint Petersburg on this single work. He wanted no ordinary parade statue. He rejected the calm, stately horse of tradition and chose a moment of motion instead — a horse rearing at the top of a rock, its rider stretching one arm out over the river.

Here is the first detail many visitors miss. The face of Peter was not modelled by Falconet. It was the work of his young student, Marie-Anne Collot. She was a rare thing in that age — a woman sculptor working at the highest level. Her version of Peter's head, with its wide eyes and laurel wreath, was the one that went into bronze. Look up at the face and you are looking at her work.

Now look down, at the horse's hind legs. Under one hoof writhes a bronze serpent. It is usually read as a symbol of the enemies and the resistance that Peter overcame. But the snake has a second job. Together with the horse's tail, it helps to carry the weight of the whole statue. The horse appears to balance on its back legs alone, which is part of what makes the pose feel so alive.

Casting a bronze of this size and balance was difficult. The front of the horse had to be lighter than the back, so that the weight would settle over the hind legs. The casting did not go smoothly, and part of the statue had to be cast a second time before the work was complete. The finished monument was unveiled to the public in 1782, with ceremony, crowds, and cannon fire along the river.

And then there is the stone beneath it all. This is the second surprise. The pedestal is a single enormous granite boulder, known as the Thunder Stone. It was found in marshy forest outside the city. Legend has it that lightning once split it, which gave the rock its name. Moving it was a feat of engineering. Workers pushed it overland on a track of rolling bronze balls, then floated it to the city on a specially built barge.

The stone is often described as one of the largest ever moved by human effort. Its original weight is estimated at well over a thousand tonnes. Stonemasons trimmed it during the journey and on site, shaping it into the curling wave you see now. Run your eyes over the surface. The granite is coarse and grey-pink, with a rough texture very different from the smooth, dark bronze above it.

The statue did not get its famous name from the sculptor or the empress. It came from a poem. In 1833 Alexander Pushkin, often called Russia's national poet, wrote The Bronze Horseman. In the poem, a poor clerk loses his love in a great flood of the Neva. Half mad with grief, he curses the statue — and then imagines the bronze rider chasing him through the empty streets at night. Since then, almost no Russian calls the monument anything else.

The square around you has seen real drama too. In December 1825, army officers led their troops here in a revolt against the new tsar. They are remembered as the Decembrists. The uprising was crushed on this same ground in a single day. In Soviet times, the square carried their name. During the Second World War, when the city lay under siege, the statue was protected by sandbags and wooden boards, and it survived.

The monument also carries its own folklore. According to one popular tale, during the war against Napoleon a Russian officer dreamed that the bronze rider came to life and warned that the city would be safe for as long as he stood in his place. The statue stayed. Locals still repeat the idea that Peter on his rock keeps watch over the city. Today you will also see newlyweds arriving here in their wedding clothes for photographs, a tradition that many couples in Saint Petersburg keep.

Before you leave, take a few steps back toward the river side and look again. Notice how the rider faces the water, his arm reaching out over the Neva, toward the wider world he wanted to reach. Notice the bronze worn smoother in places by weather and time. Listen to the wind and the traffic, and the voices of people around the rock. Then, as you walk away along the embankment, glance back once. From a distance, horse and rider still look as if they might leap.