Summer Garden

Listen for the gravel first. It crunches softly under every footstep along these long, straight alleys. Overhead, old lime trees close into a green ceiling, and the light comes through in small, moving patches. Somewhere nearby, water falls into a stone basin. On a warm day you can smell cut grass and damp earth. Beyond the railings, the traffic of Saint Petersburg carries on. In here, everything slows down.

You are standing in the Summer Garden, the oldest garden in the city. Peter the Great ordered it laid out in 1704. That is only a year after he founded Saint Petersburg itself on the marshy banks of the Neva. Think about that for a moment. The city was still mostly mud, timber and ambition. Yet the young tsar was already planning a formal garden in the European style, a place to show visitors that Russia now belonged to the wider world.

Look at the shape of the ground around you. The garden sits on what is almost an island. Water bounds it on every side: the broad Neva to the north, the Fontanka River to the east, the Moika to the south, and the narrow Swan Canal to the west. Peter loved water. He had studied shipbuilding in Holland and England, and he wanted a capital of canals and rivers. This garden is a small, tidy version of that dream.

The layout follows the formal tradition made famous at Versailles, the great palace of the French kings outside Paris. That means geometry. Straight alleys cross at right angles. Hedges are clipped into walls. Each crossing opens into a small clearing, often with a fountain or a statue at its centre. Nature here is not wild. It is arranged, measured and controlled, which was exactly the point. A ruler who could order a garden, people felt, could order a country.

Now turn your attention to the statues. Pale marble figures stand along the alleys, gods and goddesses, allegories of virtues, emperors and philosophers. Peter had many of them bought in Italy in the early eighteenth century. For most of his subjects, this was a shock. Russian art had been mostly religious icons. Suddenly, here were bare-shouldered pagan deities standing among the trees. For many visitors in Peter's time, this garden was their first meeting with classical sculpture.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Most of the statues you see today are careful copies. Over the centuries, the northern climate damaged the soft Italian marble. Frost, rain and city air are hard on stone. So many of the originals were moved indoors to protect them, and many are now kept in the nearby Mikhailovsky Castle. And if you come in winter, you will see something odd. Each statue disappears inside a wooden box, shut away until spring.

One sculpture carries a story about war and peace. It is a group called Peace and Abundance, carved by the Italian sculptor Pietro Baratta. It celebrates the Treaty of Nystad, signed in 1721. That treaty ended the long Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden. With it, Russia secured its place on the Baltic Sea. Without that victory, the city around you might not have survived. So this quiet marble group marks the moment Saint Petersburg became secure.

Near the Fontanka side, find the Summer Palace of Peter the Great. It is a surprisingly modest building, two storeys tall, painted in soft yellow with a steep roof. The Swiss-Italian architect Domenico Trezzini designed it in the early eighteenth century. It is one of the oldest stone buildings in the city. Look for the relief panels between the windows, which tell the story of the Great Northern War in allegory. Peter preferred practical, compact homes, and this one fits him well.

The fountains have their own history of loss and return. In Peter's day the garden held many of them, fed by water drawn from the Fontanka. In fact, the river takes its name from the Russian word for fountain. But in 1777 a severe flood swept through the city and wrecked the garden. The fountains were not rebuilt for a very long time. Only during a major restoration completed in 2012 did many of them flow again, recreated from old plans and drawings.

Now walk toward the Neva side and look at the long iron railing. It is one of the most admired railings in Russia. Tall granite columns topped with urns alternate with panels of dark iron and touches of gold. The work was carried out in the late eighteenth century, and it is usually credited to the architect Yury Felten. A local story says a foreign visitor once sailed to the city just to see it, then turned straight back home. Treat that one as legend.

That same gate holds a darker piece of history. In 1866, Emperor Alexander the Second was walking out of the garden here toward his carriage. A young revolutionary named Dmitry Karakozov fired a pistol at him. The shot missed. It was the first in a long series of attempts on the emperor's life. A chapel was later built at this spot in thanks for his survival, though it no longer stands. Few people strolling past today know that this gate once marked a turning point.

Deeper inside, look for a bronze monument to Ivan Krylov, Russia's best-loved writer of fables. He sits in a relaxed pose, a book in his lap. Around the pedestal, small bronze animals act out scenes from his stories — a fox, a crow, a monkey, a bear and more. The sculptor was Peter Clodt, the same artist behind the famous horse tamers on the Anichkov Bridge. Children often circle the base, trying to name every creature. It is a good game to play yourself.

The garden was always a place for walking and being seen. Over the centuries, writers and poets came here to stroll and think. Alexander Pushkin, Russia's national poet, lived nearby for a time and mentioned the garden in his writing. In summer, the benches fill with readers, couples and grandparents watching small children. In autumn, the lime leaves turn gold and gather along the hedges. Each season gives the garden a different mood, and locals visit in all of them.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment at one of the crossings. Look down one long alley, then another. Notice how the lines of trees guide your eye to a fountain or a pale figure in the distance. Listen again for the gravel and the falling water. Three centuries ago, a young tsar imagined this order in the middle of a marsh. As you walk back out through the iron gates, the city he built is waiting just beyond them.