59°55′52″N 30°21′43″E / 59.931°N 30.362°E / 59.931; 30.362

Vosstaniya Square in 2014

Vosstaniya Square (Russian: Плóщадь Восстáния, tr. Plóshchad' Vosstániya, IPA: [ˈploɕːɪtʲ vɐsːˈtanʲɪjə], lit. 'Uprising Square'), before 1918 Znamenskaya Square (Russian: Знаме́нская пло́щадь, lit. 'Square of the Sign'), is a major square in the Central Business District of Saint Petersburg, Russia. The square lies at the crossing of Nevsky Prospekt, Ligovsky Prospekt, Vosstaniya Street and Goncharnaya Street, in front of the Moskovsky Rail Terminal, which is the northern terminus of the line connecting the city with Moscow. Administratively, the Vosstaniya Square falls under the authority of the Tsentralny District.

History

Znamenskaya Square before the revolution

From the 1840s to 1918, the square was known as Znamenskaya Square, after the Cathedral of the Sign built there between 1794 and 1804 in a Neoclassical design by Fedor Demertsov. The church building commemorated the icon of Our Lady of the Sign.

Four years before the Romanov Tercentenary, in 1909, Prince Paolo Troubetzkoy, an artist and sculptor, completed a tremendous equestrian statue of Tsar Alexander III. It stood opposite Nikolayevsky Station in Znamenskaya Square. The statue was removed by the Soviet regime in 1937. It remained in storage for fifty years before its re-erection in 1994 in front of the Marble Palace.[1]

The square was a scene of many revolutionary demonstrations and protests. After the Bolsheviks took control of Petrograd in 1917, they had the square renamed (1918) into Uprising Square to commemorate these events. The Church of the Sign was demolished by the Soviet government in 1940 to make room for the surface vestibule of the Ploshchad Vosstaniya (Vosstaniya Square) Metro station, which opened in 1955.

The Leningrad Hero-City Obelisk was erected on the spot of the former Alexander III monument in 1985 in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Russian Victory Day. The obelisk received mixed reviews, as its design and style did not match that of the neo-classic square.[2]

In 2010, the 200,000-square-metre (2,200,000 sq ft) Galereya shopping center opened on the square, including a large Stockmann department store.[3]

Transport hub

The Vosstaniya Square is a major traffic hub of Saint Petersburg. It is home to the large Moscow Rail Terminal, from where trains depart for Moscow, Novosibirsk and other major cities. It is filled with passengers every day.

The square is home to the metro station Ploshchad Vosstaniya. The square is also a main hub for marshrutkas, taxis, buses, trolleybuses and trams.

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vosstaniya Square.
  1. ↑ Figes, Orlando (1997). A people's tragedy: a history of the Russian Revolution. Viking. p. 15. Retrieved 2016-09-12. Four years before the tercentenary the brilliant sculptor, Prince P. N. Trubetskoi, had completed an equestrian statue of the former Tsar Alexander III which stood in Znamenskaya Square opposite the Nikolaevsky Station in St Petersburg. It was such an ingenious and formidable representation of autocracy in human form that after the revolution the Bolsheviks decided to leave it in place [...]. [...] the horse now stands in front of the former Lenin Museum
  2. ↑ Решение вопроса о переносе памятника Александру III отложили до осени
  3. ↑ "Grand opening for Galeria Mall, St Petersburg", Mace, December 3, 2010
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