For those who cannot visit the excursion “Gardens of the Russian Museum during the Siege of Leningrad” this year, we offer a virtual version.

In 1855, a monument to Ivan Andreevich Krylov was erected in the Summer Garden. From the moment of installation, the sculpture was very fond of children. In the summer, there were always a lot of children on the site in front of the monument.

After June 22, 1941, everything changed. On July 1, the Summer Garden is closed to visitors. At the end of July, when the German troops were rushing to Leningrad, it was decided to hide the sculpture of the garden. If the marble sculpture was removed and hidden in earthen shelters, it was difficult to remove the large bronze monument from the pedestal. Because at that time most of the cranes were used in the construction of fortifications on the outskirts of Leningrad. There was no time left for the construction of a solid shelter for the bronze monument, since before that the workers of the “Museum of Urban Sculpture” were hiding other monuments of the city (the monument to I.A.Krylov has been on the balance of this museum since the mid-1930s). In September 1941, the first shelling of the city began.

The administration of the “Museum of Urban Sculpture” decides to cover the monument with a wooden structure. It consisted of logs on which boards were nailed. The monument was partially surrounded by sandbags. This structure was supposed to protect the sculpture from the blast wave and fragments.

By the evil fate of fate, most of the shells and bombs that fell on the Summer Garden exploded in the area of ​​the monument. If you look closely at the blockade photograph of the monument, you will see a tree broken by the explosion in the foreground. And on the most protective shelter there are no rows of boards torn off by the blast wave.

When, in 1944, from the monument to I.A. The remains of the shelter were removed for Krylov, it turned out that the sculpture and the bas-relief in some places were damaged by fragments. After the end of the war, painstaking restoration took place in order to restore the damaged parts of the monument.

Thanks to the work of museum workers and restorers, the monument to I.A. Krylova still makes children happy.

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