February 10 [January 29 according to the old style] 1837 the famous Russian poet Alexander 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 Gecker (Dantes).

Pushkin loved to walk in the Summer Garden. In one of the letters to his wife, the poet said: “The summer garden is my garden. Having got up from sleep, I go there in a bathrobe and in shoes. After lunch, 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 have allowed the poet to enter the garden in such an outfit.

The summer garden in the first third of the XIX century was the only ancient garden of St. Petersburg, which was open to the public. This is how journalist P. Svinyin describes the audience of the Summer Garden of the 19th century: “Until 10 o’clock in the morning there are some weak, strolling as prescribed by doctors. From 10 to 12 velvet meadows are covered with groups of children as beautiful as the Rubens and Rafaelov angels frolic under the supervision of pretty “nannies and nurses! At two o’clock in the afternoon the scene changes – and the big alley presents delights and magnificence in a different view. This is the hour of the pre-dinner walk of St. Petersburg beauties.”

At Pushkin’s Summer Garden is mentioned in the novel in verses “Eugene Onegin.”

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