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| Moyka | |
|---|---|
 View of the Moyka from thePevchesky Bridge | |
  | |
| Native name | Мойка (Russian) |
| Location | |
| Country | Russia |
| Federal city | Saint Petersburg |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Source | Fontanka |
| • coordinates | 59°56′30″N30°20′16″E / 59.94167°N 30.33778°E /59.94167; 30.33778 |
| Mouth | Neva |
• coordinates | 59°55′35″N30°16′25″E / 59.92639°N 30.27361°E /59.92639; 30.27361 |
| Length | 4.67 km (2.90 mi) |
| Basin features | |
| River system | Neva basin |
TheMoyka (Russian:Мойка, also latinised asMoika) is a short river inSaint Petersburg which splits from theNeva River. Along with the Neva, theFontanka river, and canals including theGriboyedov andKryukov, the Moyka encircles the central portion of the city, effectively making that area an island or a group of islands. The river derives its name from theIngrian word Muya[1] for "slush" or "mire", having its original source in former swamp. It is 5 kilometres (3 mi) long and 40 metres (130 ft) wide.
The river flows from theFontanka river, which is itself adistributary of the Neva, near theSummer Garden past theField of Mars, crossesNevsky Prospect and theKryukov Canal before entering the Neva river. It is also connected with the Neva by theSwan Canal and theWinter Canal.
In 1711,Peter the Great ordered the consolidation of the banks of the river. After the Kryukov Canal linked it with the Fontanka River four years later, the river became so much cleaner that its name was changed from Muya to "Moyka", the latter from the Russian verb "to wash". With the spread of cars and services for them in post-Soviet Russia, the Russian word Мойка has become a common sight unconnected to the river as it very often means (car)wash, which may confuse foreign tourists.
In 1736, the first Moyka quay was constructed in wood. Four bridges originally spanned the river: the Blue, the Green, the Yellow, and the Red. The 99-metre-wide (325 ft) Blue Bridge, now hardly visible underneathSaint Isaac's Square, remains the widest bridge in the whole city.[citation needed]
Magnificent 18th-century edifices lining the Moyka quay include theStroganov Palace,Razumovsky Palace,Yusupov Palace,New Holland Arch,Saint Michael's Castle, and thelast accommodation and museum ofAlexander Pushkin.[2]
As of 2016[update] 15 bridges cross the Moyka. Most of these have historical and artistic interest:
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Flowing through the 18th- and 19th-century capital of theRussian Empire, the Moyka, similarly to other downtown rivers and streets got its sides decorated with Russian nobles' city palaces, mansions and gardens, historical churches, monuments, apartment buildings and hotels, public squares etc.
The Moyka is a right-handdistributary of theFontanka and starts its course immediately to the south of theSummer Garden, making the southern border of the garden Island and separating it from the reddishSaint Michael's Castle.
The Summer Garden, which during the Swedish possession of these lands until they were taken by Russia in 1703 in theGreat Northern War, was part of a Swedish army major. After the foundation and planning of the new Russian capital in the lands of Saint Petersburg, the victoriousPeter I of Russia made this land plot into a gridlined garden where he placed for the first time in Russian history multiple imported statues of Greek andRoman mythology characters and had hisSummer Palace built here following Dutch examples he had seen and liked on his grandtour of Europe.
The Summer Garden and Palace, as well as the nearby Saint Michael's Castle and Garden, in post-Soviet Russia became branches of the national treasury of domestic art theRussian Museum and can be visited. The Summer Garden was mentioned byAlexander Pushkin both as his frequent place for pleasant walks, and as destination for childhood walks with a French governor of his classical forRussian literature novel in verse protagonistEugene Onegin.
The garden's Moyka fence was designed byLudwig Charlemagne.
Behind the fence there is a pond on whichswans are released in warm season.
Across the Moyka from the Summer Garden standsSaint Michael's Castle commissioned in late 18th century for himself by EmperorPaul I of Russia who had been born on this site when it was occupied by anotherSummer Palace - of his officially childless unmarried auntElisabeth I of Russia.Inspired by Western Europe models, the Castle was symbolic both of the Emperor's romantic chivalrous inclinations and his fear for his life. Interested in the high spirit of European knights, he gave shelter in Russia to theOrder of Malta when its members lost their island to the troops ofNapoleon. Paul's decision was unusual, given known rivalry between their Roman Catholic and his Russian Orthodox Church. He temporarily served as their Grand Master, and the Castle served as a residence connected with this together with his other ones including GatchinaPriory Palace. (SeeRussian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller).
His arbitrary domestic and international politics caused dissatisfaction among some of his courtiers who plotted against him, and he was assassinated in his Castle bedroom despite all his precautions: the Castle was surrounded bywater on all four sides,drawbridges raised every night, yet the guard let conspirators pass as the latter included senior supervising officers.
After him the Castle was virtually neglected by the royal family of his eldest son and heirAlexander I of Russia and was used as a shared living space by some of the Imperial household until it was converted into a Military Engineering School whose cadets included the future writerFyodor Dostoevsky. The cadets studied and lived in the building under Paul's third son, Alexander's successor EmperorNicholas I of Russia, and the edifice became also known as Engineers' Castle.
Occupied then by various Soviet institutions like the Central Naval Library, now the Castle is part ofRussian Museum,[3] has been repaired and holds national exhibitions of art connected with history of Russia.
Next to the Castle, on the Fontanka over the water near the source of Moyka, stands a miniature statueChizhik-Pyzhik of a little birdsiskin across the river from the 19th-century Emperor's Law School, whose students' uniforms' colour matched the bird's colouration.
On the right bank of Moyka across theSwan Canal from the Summer Garden lies a large open square named theField of Mars after theRoman mythologygod of war because in the late 18th and in 19th centuries it was used for Emperors'military parades of the regiments quartered in the city as the capital of the country. Before that, the once marshy ground had been drained with canals and turned into a public meadow with amusements. When turned to military use, the ground was decorated with two monuments to victorious Russian Field Marshals of the second half of 18th century. One of the memorials -an obelisk to CountPyotr Rumyantsev - was later moved to a dedicated smaller Rumyantsev Garden inVassiliyevskiy Island, while the other, theSuvorov Monument depicting CountAlexander Suvorov asMars, now onSuvorov Square at the other end of the field, facingTrinity Bridge.
After theFebruary 1917 democratic revolution that destroyed theRussian autocracy, part of the field was used to bury the casualties of the revolutionary events, and in the Soviet times this part was made into theMonument to the Fighters of the Revolution, a memorial of granite slabs inscribed with dedications to the heroes by the Bolshevik Government Secretary for EducationAnatoly Lunacharskiy, and a gas burnereternal flame was placed in the middle.Many cultivars oflilac were planted in the square. In post-Soviet Russia the rest of the field has seen a number of public politicalrallies.
Mikhailovsky Garden is across the Moyka from the Field of Mars and across Sadovaya ("Garden") Street. It is a 19th-centurylandscape garden, whose southern part meets the garden façade ofMikhailovsky Palace facingArts Square not far from the city's main streetNevsky Prospect. The Palace, built forPaul I's fourth sonGrand Duke Mikhail, was later in the 19th century converted to the royal museum of the nation's art named after Alexander III with the nationwide ethnographic department. These serve to this day as theRussian Museum and theRussian Ethnographic Museum. The garden's western side with a decorative fence faces another waterway,a canal originally named after Catherine II who commissioned it, but after the 1917 revolution renamed in honour of the playwright Alexander Griboyedov. Next to the garden there stands a brightly coloured tallchurch of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood. This place of worship and now a museum was built in a traditional Russian style to mark the canalside spot on whichEmperor Alexander II who hadin 1861 abolished serfdom wason 1 March 1881, assassinated by terrorists from theNarodnaya Volya movement.
The Mikhailovsky Garden's western side is next to the Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood and a degree college named Higher School of Folk Arts[4] (crafts), originally founded by Empress Alexandra, the wife of Russia's last Emperor, and facing a waterway that starts here off Moyka -Griboyedov Canal, across which westwards there is a square formed chiefly by two buildings of the former RoyalMews and named after them together with two adjoining streets Konyushennaya. Thecarriage house faces the square while the neoclassicalstable also runs along the Moyka.
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The 18th-century estate of Count Razumovsky with its palace and outbuildings was converted towards the end of the century into a royal charity - an orphanage that for the first time in national history gave shelter to children born out of wedlock, whose mothers could anonymously leave them in a basket supervised by the gatekeeper. They were nurtured and given general and vocational training and, if born to serfs, were set free from submission to landlords of their parents. Its mascot was the pelican, once believed to sacrifice itself nursing its young.
The bird is now on the crest of the city's large teacher-training university located in the former estate. Giving multilevel higher education at its colleges (faculties and institutes) grouped by school subjects and administrative spheres, in the 1990s it was recognised as having national importance. Named in the Soviet times after the 19th-century Russian liberal thinker and writerAlexander Herzen. The main campus has about 20 buildings occupying a large city block, while some colleges of the university are scattered around the city.
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{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Media related toMoika River at Wikimedia Commons59°55′36″N30°16′34″E / 59.92667°N 30.27611°E /59.92667; 30.27611
