Description of the attraction
The constable is a square and obelisk in the city of Gatchina, Leningrad Region. Located at the intersection of Krasnoarmeisky Prospekt and the main city street - Prospect 25 October. The creator of the ensemble was probably the Italian architect and decorator Vincenzo Brenna.
The idea of creating the obelisk came from Emperor Paul I during his travels across Europe in 1782-1783. When Pavel Petrovich visited the Prince of Condé at his residence at Chantilly (near Paris), he was impressed by a similar complex with an obelisk, which was erected in the name of the constable (from the French connetable - court position in royal France) of the Duke Anne de Montmorency.
The construction of the ensemble began in 1793. Not far from the Great Gatchina Palace, a square was formed on a hill. It was surrounded by a parapet made of Pudost stone. In the center of the square there was a 32-meter obelisk trimmed with Chernitsa stone. The construction activity was carried out by the builder and master mason Kiryan Plastinin. The work on the obelisk was completed by the end of October 1793. Also, a parapet was built, which has a length of more than 450 meters, and a guardhouse, which has not survived to our time. Around the obelisk, four stone bollards appeared, connected by chains, six artillery pieces were installed in the embrasures of the parapet, and an improvised clock was applied to the parapet itself, the arrow for the divisions of which was the shadow of the obelisk. After 3 years, the size of the square was increased, and it took on the current size.
In 1881, on May 23, at 4.00 o'clock in the morning, a 600-ton obelisk was struck by lightning, and it was destroyed almost to the ground. The question arose about restoring the obelisk, a number of proposals were put forward: to shape the monument out of concrete, to fold it out of hewn stone without using metal parts, ending with a glass ball gilded from the inside, or to make a hollow metal ball inside with a ball at the top made of metal and a lightning rod. But as a result, it was decided to restore the obelisk in its original form. The restoration work lasted quite a long time - five years, because the Chernitsa quarries were in an abandoned state, and it was necessary to prepare them for the extraction of stone. The blocks for the creation of the new obelisk were mined from a 6-meter depth, 687 stones with a total weight of about 640,000 kg were used for the reconstruction. The restoration of the monument was completed in 1886.
In 1904, the Connetable was renovated, while the twelve upper rows of stone blocks were replaced, and in 1914 the parapet was repaired, using sandstone rather than Pudost stone.
During the Great Patriotic War, the obelisk was badly damaged, most of the parapet was destroyed, the pedestals at the base were broken. After Gatchina was captured by fascist troops, instead of the copper ball that crowned the monument, a swastika was erected, made at the Roshal plant, which was removed at the end of January 1944, a few days after the liberation of the city.
In our time, the monument and the parapet have been restored, sometimes preventive restoration work is carried out.
