Wednesday Walk in the Yusupovsky Garden

Today we had nice, warm and sunny weather. I had a pretty busy day, but I carved out some time to take a little stroll around the Yusupovsky Garden.

Yusupovsky Garden on Sadovaya Street is a former garden at the estate of Prince Yusupov. This place is unique in that the estate was first built here shortly after the founding of the city - the Emperor Peter I himself gave this land to his approximate, and the architect Trezzini built a wooden house. Later a stone palace was built in place of the wooden manor, and part of the area of the old manor was built up, but the central part of the garden, with ponds and flower beds, has changed little.

In the spring, gardens and parks are usually closed to the public in our city, this is called "drying out the parks." I don't know if this kind of recreation is mandatory for parks, but for city dwellers it is sad. I wasn't sure if this garden was open to the public. As it turns out, it is "ajar" - the center gate is locked, but all the side gates are hospitably open.

This is the entrance to the garden from the Fontanka River. This entrance is known only to locals, a casual tourist has no chance to get into this place by accident. On the Fontanka Embankment you turn into a gate, then you go through three courtyards and only after that you come to the gate.

About the gate there is a small pavilion, which attracted my attention. I will return to this pavilion later, but now I will continue my walk through the garden.

The athletic fields are located near the gate through which I entered the garden. A wall borders the garden on the other side, beyond that wall are the residential houses. The boys probably live in one of the houses behind the wall, they were too lazy to walk around and climbed over the wall. A large snow drift helped them land safely. The snow had long since lost its whiteness, it had become dirty, gray-black, but had not yet melted completely.

I took a picture of the courtyard behind the wall. It's a typical courtyard of a late 19th century apartment building. Cars and a boat are parked in the yard. The navigational season hasn't started yet.

I walked through the park toward Yusupovsky Palace. The paths to the park are completely free of snow, but in the shade there are still drifts in places, and the surface of the pond is covered with loose spring ice.

There is no grass or leaves on the trees yet, but the flowerbeds near the palace delight us with the first first flowers.

In the far part of the park I took a picture of another small pavilion. It is very similar to the pavilion that I met at the beginning of the walk. But if you look more closely, you can see the differences: it is architecturally simpler and has fewer details.

I have long wanted to take close-up pictures of the pavilions, so that it would be easy to compare them, and today I did it. The first pavilion, near the entrance, was built in the 1790s by architect Giacomo Quarenghi and is an example of the Classical style. The second pavilion was built in 1932 for utilitarian purposes, it imitates the first, but it is impossible to confuse the two pavilions.

I walked around the pond, and at this point my walk began to draw to a close. Finally, I checked out the miniature island, which is accessed by a bridge. The other islands of this pond are not connected to the shores, only feathered guests visit these islands.

This is my entry for the #WednesdayWalk challenge by @tattoodjay.