Anichkov Bridge, St. Petersburg

Anichkov Bridge carries Nevsky Prospekt across the Fontanka River and is best known for four bronze sculptural groups called The Horse Tamers. The first wooden bridge was built in 1715 under engineer Mikhail Anichkov, whose name became associated with the crossing.

After several replacements, the bridge acquired much of its present appearance during reconstruction in 1841–1842, followed by another rebuilding in 1906–1908. Its defining features are four bronze groups created by sculptor Peter Klodt von Jürgensburg. Completed on the bridge by 1849–1850, they depict successive stages of a young man struggling with and eventually controlling a horse, forming a sequence representing the taming of the horse by man. Earlier castings of two groups were presented by Emperor Nicholas I to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, while another pair was sent to King Ferdinand II in Naples. Temporary plaster figures remained until Klodt completed the four different compositions visible today. During the Siege of Leningrad, the sculptures were removed in 1941 and buried in the garden of Anichkov Palace to protect them from bombardment. They returned to their pedestals on April 30, 1945. Shell-fragment damage was deliberately preserved on one granite pedestal as evidence of the siege.

Visitors can examine Klodt’s sculptures at close range while viewing the Fontanka. The bridge combines historic engineering, nineteenth-century monumental sculpture, and visible traces of wartime damage.