St. Petersburg is a city that, thanks to the ideas of Peter I, inherited the European tradition of regular planning, when straight streets intersect with straight main highways at clear angles, and spacious squares form at their intersection. Europe also inherited this tradition from its predecessor, the Great Roman Empire. But even more interesting is that before Rome, a regular layout was found in the cities of more ancient civilizations - Mesopotamia, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, etc. One of the areas organized near the historical center of St. Petersburg in a very important place for the city was Labor Square. In St. Petersburg, the metro station "Labor Square" is not yet available. Accordingly, it is necessary to get by land transport.
Where is Labor Square in St. Petersburg?
The square is located in the Admiralty district. Once upon a time on the left bank of the Neva on the Admiralty Island, not far from the Newland Holland timber storages that appeared in the first quarter of the 18th century, a convict house for galley rowers was built. By the way, the galleys - rowing warships, were released nearby - at the Galernaya (or Skampaveyskaya) shipyard, which was located below the Promenade des Anglais.
Later, the Annunciation Church was built on the site of the Prison House, and an area appeared around it: just between the embankment, a channel for fusing the forest to the Admiralty Shipyard from Forest Holland (now Konnogvardeisky Boulevard), Kryukov Canal and Bolshaya Street (now Yakubovich).
How to get to Labor Square in St. Petersburg? This is best done from Nevsky Prospekt: in the area of Malaya Morskaya Street, trolleybuses and minibuses go towards the square. But the tram rails previously laid here have long been dismantled.
The story of the three names
The name "area of Labor" was in the Soviet period. Renamed it back, returning the historical name in the 90s. due to the trend of returning old names.
The very first name of the square was Blagoveshchenskaya. She received this name in the 1830s. according to the main dominant - the Church of the Annunciation, erected here in 1830
The second name - "Nikolaevskaya" - received the square in the Grand Ducal Palace, built here in the 1860s.
In Soviet times, namely in 1918, the square began to be called the square of Labor, because that is how the nationalized Nikolaevsky Palace was renamed in connection with its new functional purpose.
Lost monument
We will talk about the aforementioned Annunciation Church, which until the Soviet era was an important spiritual and high-rise dominant of the ensemble of Labor Square in St. Petersburg. This is one of the most unique creations of Konstantin Ton, built in the neo-Byzantine style. It was built for the Horse Guards and was destroyed in 1929.
Being a five-domed, the church had tent structures under the domes, and the central one was much larger than the others.
The facade of the church was decorated with corner beams of built columns, parts of the wall are decorated with kokoshniks, pediments, facing with Putilovsky stone and Finnish granite, as well as bas-reliefs, designed by N. Ramazanov.
This amazing religious building had an underground temple and a necropolis, which were destroyed along with the foundations during the construction of the underpass. So the memory of the church on Labor Square in St. Petersburg, unfortunately, remained only in old engravings and photographs.
