Aerial view of the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns
The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange (also Bourse) and Rostral Columns, located in Saint Petersburg in the Russian Federation, are significant examples of Greek Revival architecture. Designed by French architect Thomas de Thomon, and inspired by the Greek Temple of Hera at Paestum, the stock exchange was constructed between 1805 and 1810. The rostral columns erected on either side of the Stock Exchange were completed in 1811. The Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange is located at Birzhevaya Ploschad 4.
Portico of the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange (Bourse) showing the sculpture of Neptune
Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange (Russian:Здание Биржи, tr.Zdanie Birzhi) is an historic building in Saint Petersburg, the former location of the city's stock exchange. It is the main building in an architectural complex located on the spit of Vasilyevsky Island. The building, which is situated at Birzhevaya Ploschad 4, is an important example of Greek Revival architecture. Designed by French architect Thomas de Thomon and inspired by the Greek Temple of Hera at Paestum, the stock exchange was constructed between 1805 and 1810. It was built for the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange, but was subsequently used for a different purpose. It housed the Central Naval Museum from 1939 until 2010.
Description
The Old Stock Exchange is sited to fill the majestic sweep of the Spit (in Russian Strelka) of Vasilievsky Island, just opposite the Winter Palace. Thomon's design called for a peristyle of forty four Doric columns resting upon a massive stylobate of red granite[1] and supporting an entablature of triglyphs and slotted metopes. A monumental sculptural group similar in form to a quadriga featuring Neptune, and symbolizing maritime commerce, is mounted above the portico. Both inside and outside the Bourse, a motif of the semicircle is recurrent. The interior features a large colonnaded trading hall, now divided into eight exhibition halls. The central rooms are illuminated by an oblong skylight. The surrounding ceiling features double-sunk coffers.
History
The Stock Exchange was founded by an edict of Peter the Great, ordering the establishment of a stock exchange for his capital city, inspired by the stock exchange in Amsterdam. In 1767 the Committee of City Building decided to develop the vacant space on the spit of Vasilevsky Island, and to create a new home for the St Petersburg stock exchange. The area was developed over six years, from 1783 to 1789, to a design by Giacomo Quarenghi. A range of buildings was constructed on the shores of the Bolshaya Neva River, including the main building of the Academy of Sciences and the concave portion of the northern warehouse (1795–1797). These buildings enclosed the left and right sides of the tip of the spit, the projected location of the Stock Exchange building. Construction of the Stock Exchange building itself began in 1783, but was suspended in 1787.
The project restarted in 1805, overseen by architect Thomas de Thomon, but by 1810 work had again stalled due to the upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars. The architectural ensemble was completed between 1826 and 1832 with the construction of the southern and northern warehouses and customs buildings to the design of the architect Giovanni Luchini. Decorations for the Stock Exchange were designed by Vasily Demut-Malinovsky, while further work was carried out by Marian Peretyatkovich and Fyodor Lidval between 1913 and 1914, including the fitting of a reinforced concrete arch in the main hall of the Exchange.
Use as the Central Naval Museum
Entrance while the building housed the Central Naval Museum
Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, and the establishment of a Communist economic system, the building ceased to function as a stock exchange. In 1939 it was assigned to house the growing collection of the Central Naval Museum, which traced its founding to Peter the Great's creation of his "Model Chamber" in 1709. During the Soviet period the collection received many pieces confiscated from private collections.
By 2007, federal authorities were considering moving the naval museum to a new location and to find a new use for the exchange building. Options considered were transferring it to the State Hermitage Museum, or returning it to its former use as a centre for commerce. In 2010 work began on moving the naval museum to a new location in the renovated complex “Kryukov (Marine) barracks”, at Ploshchad Truda in the Admiralteysky District of the city. The old stock exchange building was transferred from federal ownership back to the city of St Petersburg in June 2011, and plans were considered to use it for the trading of oil commodities. These plans were eventually abandoned by October 2013 and the municipal authorities began to consider other uses, including as an exhibition hall, a conference hall, or a concert hall. In December 2013 Governor of St Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko announced that the exchange will be transferred to the State Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage's director, Mikhail Piotrovsky, declared that the building will be used to house the museum's heraldry collection.
Opposite the exchange building on the Neva, de Thomon designed a semicircular overlook with circular ramps descending to a jetty projecting into the river. This formal approach, is framed by two rostral columns centered on the portico of the Stock Exchange. The Doric columns sit on a granite plinth and are constructed of brick coated with a deep terra cotta red stucco and decorated with bronze anchors and four pairs of bronze ship prows (rostra). Seated marble figures decorate the base of each column each representing the major rivers of Russia: the Volga and Dnieper at the northern Rostral Column, Neva and Volkhov at the southern one. The Rostral Columns were originally intended to serve as beacons and originally were topped by a light in the form of a Greek brazier and lit by oil. The braziers have been removed and the tops of the columns refitted with gas torches that continue to be lit on ceremonial occasions.
Gallery
The Old Stock Exchange (Bourse) as seen in an 1817 engraving
The Old Stock Exchange (Bourse) and the rostral columns in the 1890s
The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest art museum in the world by gallery space. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 6th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 1,649,443 visitors in 2021.
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States. It revived the style of ancient Greek architecture, in particular the Greek temple, with varying degrees of thoroughness and consistency. A product of Hellenism, it may be looked upon as the last phase in the development of Neoclassical architecture, which had for long mainly drawn from Roman architecture. The term was first used by Charles Robert Cockerell in a lecture he gave as Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1842.
The Saint Petersburg Metro is a rapid transit system in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Construction began in early 1941, but was put on hold due to World War II and the subsequent Siege of Leningrad, during which the constructed stations were used as bomb shelters. It was finally opened on 15 November 1955.
Vasilyevsky Island is an island in St. Petersburg, Russia, bordered by the Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva Rivers in the south and northeast, and by Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland in the west. Vasilyevsky Island is separated from Dekabristov Island by the Smolenka River. Together they form the territory of Vasileostrovsky District, an administrative division of Saint Petersburg.
The Little Neva or Malaya Neva is the second largest distributary of the river Neva. The Neva splits into Great Neva and Little Neva near the Spit of Vasilievsky Island, in the historic centre of the city of Saint Petersburg.
Tauride Palace is one of the largest and most historically important palaces in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Exchange Bridge is a bascule bridge in Saint Petersburg, opened in 1894. The bridge crosses the Little Neva River close to the Exchange Square and connects the Vasilyevsky and Petrogradsky islands.
The appearance of Saint Petersburg includes long, straight boulevards, vast spaces, gardens and parks, decorative wrought-iron fences, monuments and decorative sculptures. The Neva River itself, together with its many canals and their granite embankments and bridges help to give the city its particular ambience.
A rostral column is a type of victory column originating in ancient Greece and Rome, where they were erected to commemorate a naval military victory. Its defining characteristic is the integrated prows or rams of ships, representing captured or destroyed enemy ships. The name derives from the Latin rostrum meaning the bow of a naval vessel.
The Winter Palace is a palace in Saint Petersburg that served as the official residence of the Russian Emperor from 1732 to 1917. The palace and its precincts now house the Hermitage Museum. Situated between Palace Embankment and Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and altered almost continuously between the late 1730s and 1837, when it was severely damaged by fire and immediately rebuilt. The storming of the palace in 1917, as depicted in Soviet art and in Sergei Eisenstein's 1928 film October, became an iconic symbol of the Russian Revolution.
Universitetskaya Embankment is a 1.2 km long embankment on the right bank of the Bolshaya Neva, on Vasilievsky Island in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Starting at the Spit of Vasilievsky Island, it spans between Palace Bridge and Blagoveshchensky Bridge.
Art Museum Riga Bourse is a museum in Riga, Latvia. It was established in 1920 and contains the most extensive collection of world art in Latvia from Ancient Egyptian/Middle Eastern art dating back to 5000 BC to present.
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), is the second-largest city in Russia. It is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, with a population of roughly 5.4 million residents. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, as well as the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city.
Jean-François Thomas de Thomon was a French neoclassical architect who worked in Eastern Europe in 1791–1813. Thomas de Thomon was the author of Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns on the spit of Vasilievsky Island in Saint Petersburg and the first building of the Odessa Theatre, destroyed by fire in 1873. Thomas de Thomon, graduate of the French Academy in Rome, "imported" the high classicism practiced by this school in 1780s into Russia and thus contributed to the formation of Russian national variant of neoclassicism practiced during the reign of Alexander I.
Smolensky Cemetery is the oldest continuously operating cemetery in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It occupies a rectangular parcel in the western part of Vasilievsky Island, on the bank of the small Smolenka River, and is divided into the Orthodox, Lutheran, and Armenian sections.
Lines of Vasilyevsky Island is a group of streets in a part of downtown Saint Petersburg, Russia, and their mostly numeric names atypical for the rest of the modern Saint Petersburg.
The Neva embankment refer to various embankments along the Neva River in Saint Petersburg, Russia:
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Saint Petersburg:
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
