Museums of Russia: The exhibition “Mon Repos Park – unique monument of landscape art of the XVIII-XIX centuries” in Saint-Petersburg

April 7, 2016 in the Eastern wing of the G. R. Derzhavin Museum-Estate (St. Petersburg) is opened the traveling exhibition "Mon Repos Park - unique monument of landscape art of the XVIII-XIX centuries".

The exhibition presents materials about Mon Repos, an outstanding monument of garden and park art, its place among the European landscape parks, owners of the estate of Mon Repos throughout two centuries.

The Museum-Reserve was founded in 1988, its total area is 163 hectares of which 31 hectares is a historic park of rocky landscape style. From the heights of coastal cliffs open up a variety of scenic vistas - a mandatory element of landscape parks.

Particular attention is paid to the owner at the manor Baron Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolai (1737-1820), whose name is associated with the highest flowering of the Mon Repos Park. Nicolai was acquainted with prominent figures of the Age of Enlightenment – F.-M. Voltaire, F. Grimm, D. J. d'Alembert, D. Diderot. In 1769, he became one of the mentors of Tsarevich Paul Petrovich, in 1798 Emperor Paul I appointed him president of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1803, Baron Nicolai resigns and gives himself entirely cherished dream - to create his own garden.   

Nicholas was well-known as a writer, author of numerous elegies, epistles, fables, romances poetry and dramatic works. Nicolai’s poem "Mon Repos estate in Finland. 1804" to date remains the best literary description of the Mon Repos Park. 

Exhibition project marks a unique collaboration between two of the museum complexes: the State historical-architectural and natural museum-reserve "Park Mon Repos" and the G. R. Derzhavin Museum-estate related to the lives of the two cultural figures of the XVIII - early XIX centuries L. G. von Nicolai and G. R. Derzhavin.