Moyka
The Moyka is a short river in Saint Petersburg which splits from the Neva River. Along with the Neva, the Fontanka river, and canals including the Griboyedov and Kryukov, the Moyka encircles the central portion of the city, effectively making that area an island or a group of islands. The river derives its name from the Ingrian word Muya for "slush" or "mire", having its original source in former swamp. It is long and wide.
The river flows from the Fontanka river, which is itself a distributary of the Neva, near the Summer Garden past the Field of Mars, crosses Nevsky Prospect and the Kryukov Canal before entering the Neva river. It is also connected with the Neva by the Swan Canal and the Winter Canal.
In 1711, Peter the Great ordered the consolidation of the banks of the river. After the Kryukov Canal linked it with the Fontanka River four years later, the river became so much cleaner that its name was changed from Muya to "Moyka", the latter from the Russian verb "to wash". With the spread of cars and services for them in post-Soviet Russia, the Russian word Мойка has become a common sight unconnected to the river as it very often means wash, which may confuse foreign tourists.
In 1736, the first Moyka quay was constructed in wood. Four bridges originally spanned the river: the Blue, the Green, the Yellow, and the Red. The Blue Bridge, now hardly visible underneath Saint Isaac's Square, remains the widest bridge in the whole city.
Magnificent 18th-century edifices lining the Moyka quay include the Stroganov Palace, Razumovsky Palace, Yusupov Palace, New Holland Arch, Saint Michael's Castle, and the last accommodation and museum of Alexander Pushkin.
Bridges
15 bridges cross the Moyka. Most of these have historical and artistic interest:- Green Bridge
- Red Bridge
- Potseluyev Bridge
- Blue Bridge
- Postoffice Bridge
- Big Stables Bridge
- Tripartite Bridge
- First Engineer Bridge
- First Sadovy Bridge
- Yellow Bridge
Riverside architectural objects
The Summer Garden
The Summer Garden, which during the Swedish possession of these lands until they were taken by Russia in 1703 in the Great Northern War, was part of a Swedish army major. After the foundation and planning of the new Russian capital in the lands of Saint Petersburg, the victorious Peter I of Russia made this land plot into a gridlined garden where he placed for the first time in Russian history multiple imported statues of Greek and Roman mythology characters and had his Summer Palace built here following Dutch examples he had seen and liked on his grandtour of Europe.
The Summer Garden and Palace, as well as the nearby Saint Michael's Castle and Garden, in post-Soviet Russia became branches of the national treasury of domestic art the Russian Museum and can be visited. The Summer Garden was mentioned by Alexander Pushkin both as his frequent place for pleasant walks, and as destination for childhood walks with a French governor of his classical for Russian literature novel in verse protagonist Eugene Onegin.
The garden's Moyka fence was designed by Ludwig Charlemagne. File:Fence of Summer Garden.jpg|thumb|The Summer Garden's Moyka Fence, a detail depicting a shield with the head of Gorgon Medusa and attributes of Roman lictors' authority - fasces Behind the fence there is a pond on which swans are released in warm season.
Saint Michael's Castle
Across the Moyka from the Summer Garden stands Saint Michael's Castle commissioned in late 18th century for himself by Emperor Paul I of Russia who had been born on this site when it was occupied by another Summer Palace - of his officially childless unmarried aunt Elisabeth I of Russia.Inspired by Western Europe models, the Castle was symbolic both of the Emperor's romantic chivalrous inclinations and his fear for his life. Interested in the high spirit of European knights, he gave shelter in Russia to the Order of Malta when its members lost their island to the troops of Napoleon. Paul's decision was unusual, given known rivalry between their Roman Catholic and his Russian Orthodox Church. He temporarily served as their Grand Master, and the Castle served as a residence connected with this together with his other ones including Gatchina Priory Palace..
His arbitrary domestic and international politics caused dissatisfaction among some of his courtiers who plotted against him, and he was assassinated in his Castle bedroom despite all his precautions: the Castle was surrounded by water on all four sides, drawbridges raised every night, yet the guard let conspirators pass as the latter included senior supervising officers.
After him the Castle was virtually neglected by the royal family of his eldest son and heir Alexander I of Russia and was used as a shared living space by some of the Imperial household until it was converted into a Military Engineering School whose cadets included the future writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. The cadets studied and lived in the building under Paul's third son, Alexander's successor Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, and the edifice became also known as Engineers' Castle.
Occupied then by various Soviet institutions like the Central Naval Library, now the Castle is part of Russian Museum, has been repaired and holds national exhibitions of art connected with history of Russia.
Next to the Castle, on the Fontanka over the water near the source of Moyka, stands a miniature statue Chizhik-Pyzhik of a little bird siskin across the river from the 19th-century Emperor's Law School, whose students' uniforms' colour matched the bird's colouration.
Mikhailovsky Garden and the Field of Mars
On the right bank of Moyka across the Swan Canal from the Summer Garden lies a large open square named the Field of Mars after the Roman mythology god of war because in the late 18th and in 19th centuries it was used for Emperors' military parades of the regiments quartered in the city as the capital of the country. Before that, the once marshy ground had been drained with canals and turned into a public meadow with amusements. When turned to military use, the ground was decorated with two monuments to victorious Russian Field Marshals of the second half of 18th century. One of the memorials - an obelisk to Count Pyotr Rumyantsev - was later moved to a dedicated smaller Rumyantsev Garden in Vassiliyevskiy Island, while the other, the Suvorov Monument depicting Count Alexander Suvorov as Mars, now on Suvorov Square at the other end of the field, facing Trinity Bridge.After the February 1917 democratic revolution that destroyed the Russian autocracy, part of the field was used to bury the casualties of the revolutionary events, and in the Soviet times this part was made into the Monument to the Fighters of the Revolution, a memorial of granite slabs inscribed with dedications to the heroes by the Bolshevik Government Secretary for Education Anatoly Lunacharskiy, and a gas burner eternal flame was placed in the middle.
Many cultivars of lilac were planted in the square. In post-Soviet Russia the rest of the field has seen a number of public political rallies.
Mikhailovsky Garden is across the Moyka from the Field of Mars and across Sadovaya Street. It is a 19th-century landscape garden, whose southern part meets the garden façade of Mikhailovsky Palace facing Arts Square not far from the city's main street Nevsky Prospect. The Palace, built for Paul I's fourth son Grand Duke Mikhail, was later in the 19th century converted to the royal museum of the nation's art named after Alexander III with the nationwide ethnographic department. These serve to this day as the Russian Museum and the Russian Ethnographic Museum.
The garden's western side with a decorative fence faces another waterway, a canal originally named after Catherine II who commissioned it, but after the 1917 revolution renamed in honour of the playwright Alexander Griboyedov. Next to the garden there stands a brightly coloured tall church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood. This place of worship and now a museum was built in a traditional Russian style to mark the canalside spot on which Emperor Alexander II who had in 1861 abolished serfdom was on 1 March 1881, assassinated by terrorists from the Narodnaya Volya movement.
File:Mikhaylovsky garden, Saint Petersburg.jpg|thumb|right|300px|View across the Mikhailovsky Garden towards the northern facade of the Mikhailovsky Palace
File:Aerial view of Mikhailovsky Garden.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Aerial view of the Mikhailovsky Garden, looking towards the south. The course of the Moyka River and the Rossi Pavilion in the foreground, and the Mikhailovsky Palace in the background. The Church of the Saviour on Blood is visible to the right of the picture.