The Alexander Column, Night View — engraving

The Alexander Column, St. Petersburg, Night View with Illumination.

"THE COLUMN OF ALEXANDER, ST. PETERSBURG".

Technique, Material: Steel engraving / Paper
Artist: ,  Engraver: 
Date, Publisher: end of the 19th century.
Size: sheet 25x18, image 20x14 cm.

This engraving presents a night view of the Alexander Column on Palace Square, surrounded by four majestic lamps lit for an illumination. This unique image transports the viewer to the atmosphere of festive St. Petersburg in the second half of the 19th century, when the monument, a symbol of military glory by day, transformed into the center of a light extravaganza by night.

The lamps around the Alexander Column appeared much later than the column itself—only in 1876, during the reign of Emperor Alexander II . The author of this luxurious project was the architect Karl Rakhau. Each of the four lamps consists of five lights mounted on elegant cast-iron candelabra, which, together with the bronze fence they adorned, created a unified architectural ensemble . Interestingly, the idea of gas lighting for the monument arose much earlier: there is an Imperial decree of October 11, 1836, "to install cast-iron candelabra with lamps according to approved designs for gas lighting" near the monument to Alexander I.

Regarding the type of illumination depicted in the engraving, these are precisely gas lamps. The history of gas lighting in St. Petersburg began in 1819, when the first gas lamp was lit on Aptekarsky Island . By 1839, the city already had 204 gas lamps burning, and by the mid-19th century, gas lighting had become commonplace on central streets, including Palace Square . Electric lamps would not appear in St. Petersburg until the 1880s, so for the 1870s, when these candelabra were installed, gas was the only possible source of such bright and spectacular illumination.

The lit lamps create a luminous halo around the column, emphasizing its monumentality against the night darkness. The figure of the angel at the top, illuminated from below, appears to float in the air. In the background, the arch of the General Staff building is faintly visible, also likely adorned with festive illumination. The engraving captures not just an urban landscape, but an entire event—one of those ceremonial evenings when, as the poet Vasily Zhukovsky wrote about the column's opening, "for a long time, noisy crowds wandered through the streets of the illuminated city".