Cast Iron (Nikolaevsky) Gates

The cast-iron gates on Sadovaya Street were a gift from Emperor Nicholas I to his mother Maria Feodorovna for her birthday on October 14, 1826. The grateful mother commanded the manager of Pavlovsk: “...I order these gates to be named after my beloved son, His Imperial Majesty – the Nikolaevsky Gates.”

The gates were installed on the Tsarskoye Selo road, at the border of Pavlovsk Park.

The gate project was designed by K. Rossi, then the chief architect of Pavlovsk. The gates, weighing 5,000 poods, were manufactured at the St. Petersburg Foundry very quickly: six weeks were spent casting them, and twelve days assembling them.

Sixteen Doric order columns, fixed on four low pedestals, are grouped in fours, forming three spans. The central span served for transport, the two side spans for pedestrians. The gates are crowned with a stepped attic, above the central span is a figure of a double-headed eagle with flowing ribbons at its feet and a crown on top.

Attached to the gates is a cast-iron fence decorated with vases of flowers and fruits.

Over the following years, the city expanded, and the gates found themselves not at its border but deep within the urban development.

After the revolution, some decorative elements of the gates were damaged or removed, for example, the crown above the figure of the double-headed eagle; in 1981, replicas were made based on old photographs and drawings, and the structure was restored. Despite its impressive dimensions (height – 10.7 meters, width – 17 meters), the structure once caused a serious traffic accident involving a car and a scheduled bus. As a result, a large piece broke off from the gates, and they remained in that condition for five years until the Pavlovsk administration restored the architectural masterpiece, repainting it white at the same time.

Sources:

Triumphal Arches of Leningrad, Lenizdat, 1985. pp. 53-54.

Nesin, Sautkina. Imperial and Grand-Ducal Pavlovsk. p. 134, Mary

https://www.citywalls.ru/house19384.html

https://tonkosti.ru/Николаевские_ворота_Павловска