Greetings friends, March is a bit strange this year. At first it felt like everything was in the right order. The first two weeks of March were snowy and frosty, then came the sunny warm days and the city transformed. Spring seemed to be in full swing. We put away our winter coats and hats and rejoiced at the beautiful warm weather... but this morning I was walking through the snow-covered city again and admiring the white silhouettes of the trees. It's been a few days now that winter is back on the streets and winter clothes are back in their usual place.
Today I'm going to tell you about a walk I took recently, on one snowy, sunny March day. The main purpose of my walk was to see how the renovation of the old manor house on the right bank of the Neva River was going and to visit the pier with the sphinxes. I took the bus to a stop called Neva Garden. From there I had to walk through the garden and out onto the Neva embankment.
The garden greeted me with unusual garden sculptures and plaques that told stories of what had and hadn't happened. One of these plaques informs with documentary precision: "Nothing happened in this place on 31st August 1768". The bright red mechanical sculpture is called Gravitsapa.
The territory of the park once belonged entirely to the Kushelev-Besborodko estate, it was a country estate. But significant changes took place in the 19th century. Healing properties of ferrous mineral springs became a magnet for those wishing rest and treatment. A fashionable spa village began to grow on the site of the princely residence. At the end of the 19th century the old manor house housed the Elisabeth community of the Sisters of Mercy, and several hospital buildings were built in the old park.
In the twentieth century, the area ceased to be a countryside. New housing estates grew up around the old park. However, the buildings of the Sisters of Mercy remained unchanged, and the hospital continued to operate there. The buildings were decaying, and as they grew older, they did not meet the requirements of modern medicine. In the new XXI century, the hospital abandoned this historic location. Builders, restorers and gardeners came to the site and work began to repair and restore the historic buildings.
A large part of the buildings have already been renovated, but the restoration of the main building is still going on. I walked first through the park and then out onto the promenade. The fence covers the construction site and I did not have a chance to look at everything in detail, but it looks like the renovation is nearing its completion.
Opposite the manor house is a pier, adorned with grey granite sphinx figures. It is not the most famous pier with sphinxes in St. Petersburg. The most famous sphinxes are the sphinxes at the Academy of Arts in the centre of the city. But besides the most famous, there are several other groups of sphinxes in our city. Sphinxes near Kushelev-Besborodko estate are new sculptures, they have been restored from old drawings in the middle of XX century. The old sphinxes that used to stand on this wharf disappeared without a trace once in the 19th century. The details of this disappearance are not known.
| ○ | ○ |
|---|---|
| Smartphone | Google Pixel 3a |
| Location | Saint Petersburg, Russia |
This is my entry for the #WednesdayWalk challenge by 
