On February 10 [January 29 according to the old style], 1837, the famous Russian poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin died. The poet died in an apartment in house 12 on the Moika embankment from a wound received in a duel with Georges de Gekkern (Dantes).

Pushkin liked to walk in the Summer Garden. In one of his letters to his wife, the poet wrote: “The summer garden is my garden. When I get up from sleep, I go there in a dressing gown and shoes. After dinner I sleep in it, read and write. I’m at home in it.” Although the letter was written with a share of irony, because the watchmen would hardly let the poet into the garden in such an outfit.

The Summer Garden in the first third of the 19th century was the only old garden in St. Petersburg that was open to the public. This is how the journalist P. Svinin describes the audience of the Summer Garden of the 19th century: “Until 10 o’clock in the morning, only the weak are found here, strolling on the orders of doctors. nannies and nurses! At two o’clock in the afternoon the scene changes – and the big alley presents charms and splendor under a different guise. This is the hour of the pre-dinner festivities of St. Petersburg beauties. “

Pushkin mentions the Summer Garden in the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”. These are lines that many people know by heart and often quote when visiting the Summer Garden.