VVVF+RQ Petrodvortsovy District, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Oldenburg Park — the former summer residence of Nicholas I’s nephew, Prince Oldenburg, located along the sea on the territory of Old Peterhof opposite the Oranienbaum descent, covering an area of 39 hectares.
In the early 1830s, two plots were purchased by the Peterhof Palace administration for the construction of the park, to which the territory of the village of Novaya was later added; the residents of the village were relocated to other lands. The territory of these plots was gifted by Nicholas I to Prince Oldenburg, who moved to Russia in December 1830.
In June 1837, architect Stasov began work on arranging the prince’s estate. The park was given a landscape character, alleys were planned, and the pine forest was preserved. Within the park, a two-story English Gothic-style cottage-farm with a mezzanine, a gardener’s house, utility buildings, and greenhouses were built; on the cape of the bay, a pavilion was erected.
After the revolution, the Oldenburg estate was nationalized, and in the spring of 1919, the People’s Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR opened a Natural History Station on the park’s territory for summer excursions of students, where a herbarium of the flora of the Peterhof surroundings was created.
The main farm buildings were destroyed during the war; only one wing at 29 Znamenskaya Street remains.
Currently, the park’s territory houses the “Vodokanal” water treatment facilities, gardeners’ plots, a military base with a lighthouse, and a cottage complex built in 2009–2010. The undeveloped areas on the coast west of the lighthouse, belonging to St. Petersburg State University, remain untouched; during the Soviet era, there was the pioneer camp “Ekran” there.
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