From
the creator of the marvelous St. Isaac's Cathedral came this monument to the
Russian military victory in the war with Napoleon's France. Named after
Emperor Alexander I, who ruled Russia between 1801 and 1825 (during the
Napoleonic Wars), the column is a terrific piece of architecture and
engineering.
The
Alexander Column (Aleksandrovskaia Kolonna ), the focal point of Palace
Square,
was designed by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand and built
between 1830 and 1834. The monument is 155 feet 8 inches tall and is topped
with a statue of an angel holding a cross (the face of the angel is said to be
modeled on the face of Emperor Alexander I). The body of the column is made of
a single monolith of red granite, which stands 83 feet 6 inches high and about
11 feet 5 inches in diameter. It is a terrific feat of engineering that this
enormous column, weighing an incredible 1,322,760 pounds (600 tons), was
erected in under 2 hours without the aid of modern cranes and engineering
machines.