The Siberian Marble Gallery between Swan Islands — an artificial archipelago of seven islets in the landscape park of Tsarskoe Selo — spans a rivulet flowing between several ponds. The bridge was modelled after the Palladian Bridge (1736) in the park of Wilton House and served as a showcase for the Ural marbles. All the details of the bridge — including the granite Ionic colonnade — were produced in Yekaterinburg, transported to Tsarskoe Selo and then assembled in the workshop of Vincenzo Tortori in 1774. Probably called Siberian due to its construction of Urals kinds of marble.
Has been repeatedly vandalised (on a small-scale) despite the fact that after renovation in late XXc. it was fenced off from public access and equipped with burglar alarm.
Famous quotes containing the words marble and/or bridge:
“Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I was at work that morning. Someone came riding like mad
Over the bridge and up the road—Farmer Rouf’s little lad.
Bareback he rode; he had no hat; he hardly stopped to say,
“Morgan’s men are coming, Frau, they’re galloping on this way.”
—Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894)