Bronze Horseman

This guide to the Bronze Horseman follows the seventeen-sixty-eight effort to move a roughly 1,500-ton boulder found buried in a swamp six kilometers to this spot, using a Greek engineer's crude ball-bearing sledge and nearly two years of hauling. It traces how Etienne Falconet, hired on Diderot's advice, sculpted Peter the Great's rearing horse and the serpent crushed beneath it, then fell out bitterly with Catherine years before the statue was finished. Look closely at the horse's hind legs, planted on the stone as its front legs rear into open air.