Ostrovsky Square, St. Petersburg

Ostrovsky Square is a historic public space shaped largely by architect Carlo Rossi between 1816 and 1834. The area appeared as Anichkov Square on an 1829 plan and was officially named Alexandrinskaya Square in 1832, after the newly opened Alexandrinsky Theatre. It received its present name in 1923, honoring playwright Alexander Ostrovsky. The square forms part of Rossi’s larger Empire-style urban ensemble.

Its architectural focus is the Alexandrinsky Theatre, designed by Rossi and opened in 1832, with a monumental colonnade and the quadriga of Apollo crowning its façade. Rossi also designed the long buildings extending behind the theatre and a new wing of the Imperial Public Library, now the National Library of Russia. Constructed in 1828–1832, this wing was carefully integrated with the earlier library building designed by Yegor Sokolov. At the center of Catherine Garden stands the Monument to Catherine II, unveiled in 1873. The project was developed by Mikhail Mikeshin, while the figure of the empress was executed by Matvey Chizhov. Nine figures around the pedestal represent prominent people from Catherine’s reign, including Grigory Potemkin, Alexander Suvorov, Gavriil Derzhavin, Ekaterina Dashkova, and Alexei Orlov. Architect David Grimm redesigned the garden around the monument.

The square brings together theatre, library architecture, monumental sculpture, and landscaped space within a carefully planned nineteenth-century ensemble defined by coordinated façades and formal urban axes.