PETER THE GREAT STATUE

Description

Essentials about the Peter the Great Statue in brief

Russia’s largest statue continues to heat tempers and provoke heated discussions among tourists as well as Muscovites themselves. The 96-meter-high statue of Tsar Peter I stands on a ship on an artificial island in the Moskva River. Since Peter the Great is in a sense considered the founder of the Russian navy, his statue was inaugurated in 1997 on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of its founding.

The architecture of the Peter the Great Statue

With his left hand the tsar holds the ship’s steering wheel, with his right he holds up a scroll. Behind him is the mast with cordage and three sails. Below the ship is a piedestal showing waves and several smaller ships. The fountains around the monument are meant to give the impression that the ship is moving through the water.

The creator of the controversial monument is Georgian-Russian sculptor Zurab Zereteli. It has been variously claimed that Zereteli initially created the work as a likeness of Christopher Columbus and offered it to the U.S., Spain and various Latin American countries in the early 1990s to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. When he was unable to find a buyer, he is said to have altered the statue to turn Columbus into Tsar Peter. Be that as it may, the fact is that the mayor of Moscow at the time, Yuri Luzhkov, was a friend of Zereteli’s and had several of his works installed in the city’s public spaces.

The Peter the Great Statue as an object of dispute

The majority of Moscow’s residents reject the monument. On the one hand, because many residents find the monumental statue unsightly, on the other hand, because many Muscovites still resent Peter I’s relocation of the capital of the Russian Tsarist Empire from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. The monument has also been called one of the ugliest statues in the world in a wide variety of tourist publications. There are ongoing efforts to move the statue to another location. However, all initiatives so far have failed due to the high costs estimated for it.