Novosilviy Bridge over the Slavyanka River, Okruzhnaya Avenue, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 196625
Ruins, a pavilion in Pavlovsky Park, built by Cameron in the early 1800s near the Elizavetina Pavilion on the left bank of the Slavyanka River in the area known as the Red Valley. The ruins consisted of a wall with arched openings, accessed by a staircase, and featured a cascade. Around the ruins were scattered genuine antique marbles. In his descriptions of St. Petersburg and its surroundings, Svinin wrote: “...Very skillfully made ruins – broken statues, bas-reliefs, cornices, and columns of various marbles, emerging from the grass and covered with moss, present to the imagination a vivid notion of the ruins of Greece, still breathing grandeur and glory.”
Near the Novosilviy Bridge on the edge of the forest stand two partially ruined arches. One of them leads into a small vaulted room, the walls of which are partially buried in earth. Nearby are the remains of a stone staircase with a small landing. These ruins were created by architect Charles Cameron in 1801. The 19th-century writer and ethnographer Pavel Svinin described them as: “broken statues, bas-reliefs, cornices, columns of rare marbles, emerging from the grass and covered with moss, presented to the imagination a vivid notion of the ruins of Greece...”
Such a structure was a characteristic element in park landscapes of the Classicism era. Empress Maria Feodorovna loved to show this unusual corner of one of the remote areas of Pavlovsky Park to her guests.
Sources:
