A document from the collection of the SPbGASU Scientific and Technical Library was presented in the Grand Vestibule of the Armory Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin at an unusual exhibition “The History of the Creation of the Monument to Emperor Alexander II in the Moscow Kremlin”.

At the opening ceremony, the General Director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums Elena Gagarina addressed the guests with a welcoming speech: “We believe that it is extremely important to talk about what the Kremlin was like, what it looked like in different eras of its existence, and what was important for the citizens and the country’s residents. At the exhibition, for the first time, we are telling about a grandiose work, the first imperial monument in Moscow, with which none of the monuments that existed in the city at that time could compare. Its image was determined by the wish of Emperor Alexander III: the memorial had to look “simple and sacred”. We managed to collect very rare sketches, memorial items, fragments of the monument, which, unfortunately, did not exist for long. We believe it is very important to tell about this amazing architectural work that stood at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries on the Kremlin’s Borovitsky Hill.”

The authors of the monument to Alexander II in the Kremlin are the architect Nikolai Sultanov (director of the Institute of Civil Engineers (SPbGASU) in 1896-1903), the artist Pavel Zhukovsky (his sketch was preserved in the SPbGASU Scientific and Technical Library and was presented by our university at the exhibition) and the sculptor Aleksandr Opekushin. You can learn more about the history of the monument in the scientific reading hall of the SPbGASU STL from the magazine "Builder" for 1898 and from the printed material (leaflet) prepared for the exhibition in Moscow.