The First Engineer Bridge (russian: Первый Инженерный мост, ''Pervy Inzhenerny most'') is one of several Russian bridges that span the Moika River in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

. The bridge is one of a group of four bridges located near the Mars Field, and opposite the main entrance to the

Summer Garden The Summer Garden (russian: Ле́тний сад, ''Letniy sad'') is a historic public garden that occupies an eponymous island between the Neva, Fontanka, Moika, and the Swan Canal in downtown Saint Petersburg, Russia and shares its nam ...

, spanning the Moika River, the

Fontanka River The Fontanka (russian: Фонтанка), a left branch of the river Neva, flows through the whole of Central Saint Petersburg, Russia – from the Summer Garden to . It is long, with a width up to , and a depth up to . The Moyka River ...

, and the Swan Canal in the historic center of the city. The First Engineer Bridge is one of the most decorative of Saint Petersburg's more than 500 bridges. The original small wooden bridge, called the ''Summer Bridge'' and rumored to have been designed by the architect

Bartolomeo Rastrelli Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (russian: Франче́ско Бартоломе́о (Варфоломе́й Варфоломе́евич) Растре́лли; 1700 in Paris, Kingdom of France – 29 April 1771 in Saint Petersburg, Russian Emp ...

, was built in the 1760s. This bridge was replaced with the current

cast-iron Cast iron is a class of iron–carbon alloys with a carbon content more than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its color when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impuriti ...

bridge, in 1824-1825, and renamed the First Engineer Bridge, in 1829, after the nearby Engineers' Castle (originally called ''St Michael's'' or ''Mikhailovsky Castle''). Engineer

Pierre-Dominique Bazaine Pierre-Dominique Bazaine (Пётр Петрович Базен) (1786–1838) was a French scientist and engineer. Early life He was born 13 January 1786, in the town of Scy-sur-Moselle, son of Pierre Bazaine (1760-1832) and Francoise Gilb ...

(1786-1838) (''Пётр Петрович Базен'') designed and constructed the bridge in a similar fashion to the ''Big Stables Bridge'' (''Bolshoy Konyushenny Bridge''), a bridge located further west on the Moika River, using pre-fabricated hollow wedges. Bazaine also managed to reduce the use of expensive cast-iron in the bridge's construction to one-third of the total mass of the bridge, by innovatively designing the sidewalks with the use of special

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

supports. The siding is decorated in Doric style by architect I.I. "Joseph" Charlemagne. The beams have a curved and perforated appearance, and the bridge's rectangular orifices are bordered with flat frames, giving the bridge an appearance of lightness and transparency. The bridge's sidewalk tiles were designed as a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

and are supported by rich ornamental bracket figures. Intricately inscribed plaques with grooves extend from the figures on frieze planes, in the style of Doric

triglyph Triglyph is an architectural term for the vertically channeled tablets of the Doric frieze in classical architecture, so called because of the angular channels in them. The rectangular recessed spaces between the triglyphs on a Doric frieze are ...

coverings. The triglyphs cover the joints of the side plaques. Cast-iron arches span closely behind. The railings, also designed by Charlemagne, comprise several sections of short

pilum The ''pilum'' (; plural ''pila'') was a javelin commonly used by the Roman army in ancient times. It was generally about long overall, consisting of an iron shank about in diameter and long with a pyramidal head, attached to a wooden shaft b ...

s, placed between bouquets of decorations and inscriptions of round shields, with bas-relief images of the heads of

Medusa In Greek mythology, Medusa (; Ancient Greek: Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress"), also called Gorgo, was one of the three monstrous Gorgons, generally described as winged human females with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Those ...

, with the Gorgon's snaky locks for hair. In 1994, a small bronze statue of

Chizhik-Pyzhik "Chizhyk-Pyzhik" (russian: Чи́жик-Пы́жик) is a Russian satirical folk song which runs as follows: Чижик-пыжик, где ты был? На Фонтанке водку пил. Выпил рюмку, выпил две – Зак� ...

was installed on a ledge in the embankment, opposite the

Imperial School of Jurisprudence The Imperial School of Jurisprudence (Russian: Императорское училище правоведения) was, along with the Page Corps, a school for boys in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire. The school for would-be ...

near the First Engineer Bridge. The statue has since been repeatedly stolen.

References

* Bunin, Michail Samoylovich ''Mosty Leningrada : Ocerky istory i architektury mostov Peterburga-Petrograda-Leningrada'', Leningrad: Strojizdat, 1986. * Novikov, Yuriy Vladimirovich ''et al.'', ''Mosty i naberezhnye Leningrada'', Saint Petersburg (Russia): Lenizdat,

External links

photos of the bridge
{{coord, 59.9417, N, 30.3378, E, type:landmark, display=title Bridges in Saint Petersburg Bridges completed in 1825 Pierre-Domonique Bazaine Cultural heritage monuments of federal significance in Saint Petersburg

See also

References

External links