Carpie's Pond

Carpie's Pond is located in the Summer Garden of St. Petersburg. In 1704, according to the plan for the improvement of the city space, work began on laying out the Summer Garden - one of the favorite places of Peter the Great, who decided to create a well-groomed little Europe here. In the first years, Peter I drew and made changes to the drawings of the Summer Garden. Beginning in 1709, the tsar entrusted A.D. with overseeing the work. Menshikov. First, the swamps were drained, then they began to prepare solid soil. The second stage of the arrangement is the creation of cascading ponds, one of which was the Carpiev Pond. This is what visitors see first when they enter the Garden from the Moika.

Swans and their charm

Since the time of Peter I, the Carpiev Pond has attracted the attention of swans. It is known that swans will never settle in dirty places. Crows and swans are birds of different flights: swans always avoid close communication with crows. The presence of swans is a sure sign of the cleanliness and well-groomed nature of both the artificial Carpie Pond and the surrounding area. You can admire their gracefulness only in the warm summer season for about five months - in the winter they are sent to spend the winter in the Moscow Zoo, which, curiously, has to pay dearly to rent the noble birds.

Animate and inanimate attractions

Now the Carpiev Pond has been chosen as the place of their permanent pilgrimage by a pair of inseparable swans - Ruslan and Lyudmila, named after the names that A.S. glorified in his poem. Pushkin. People say that black swans used to swim in the pond. Carpiev Pond began to bear this name because of its inhabitants - carps. Previously, the reservoir was decorated with fountains; in 1839, it acquired a vase made by order of the Swedish monarch Charles XIV especially for the Russian Emperor Nicholas I. The Elfdalen vase is an act of reconciliation and at the same time a sign of recognition of the valor of the Russian army.