One of the most famous bridges, not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Russia, is the Anichkov Bridge .  "For the great Neva River at the Fountain of pershpektive make a bridge" - these words of Peter's decree began in 1715 his story .  The original wooden bridge was built by the soldiers of the military engineer Lieutenant Colonel M .  ABOUT .  Anichkova, after whom the bridge and got its name .  Shortly after the opening of the bridge has gained his movement essential to the life and development of the young city as it connected the Admiralty to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, .  By the 80 th years of the eighteenth century, the width and the reliability of the wooden bridge ceased to meet the city's needs and it was replaced by three-span stone bridge with adjustable wooden middle part, chains and towers with lifting mechanisms - exactly the same as six bridges built over the Fontanka, when she began dressing in embankments of granite .  The city has grown over time, expanded Nevsky Prospekt, so the middle of the nineteenth century, again there is a need to rebuild the bridge . 

In 1841, the old bridge was dismantled and seven months had built a new project engineers, bridge builders AD Gotman and JF Buttau. The bridge was still three-span, with flat arches, made of brick, were faced with granite supports and spans of the bridge. It was decorated with iron railings on the drawings of the Berlin architect Karl Schinkel with alternating pairs sculptures seahorses and mermaids. These railings are a copy of those that were already established in Berlin at the Palace Bridge.

But the main decoration of the bridge that made him world-famous steel sculpture composition Peter Karlovich Klodt, "Taming a horse person" .  The first two sculptures, cast in bronze, - "The young man, taking the reins of a horse" and "Horse to reaching young men" - were installed on the west side of the bridge in 1841 .  Sculptures were copies of the east coast of the western, but were temporarily plaster, painted bronze .  Cooked to replace them, just cast bronze horses straight from the cast house, Emperor Nicholas I presented to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV .  They still adorn Berlin Kleist Park .  In 1844 the eastern plaster sculptures were replaced by bronze, but again not for long, just two years .  This time they were given to the king of the Two Sicilies for the hospitality accorded to Russian empress during her travels in Italy .  In 1846, copies of sculptures Klodt were in Naples .  Later, copies klodtovskih horses appeared in Strelna, Peterhof, in Kuzminki - Moscow estate of Prince Golitsyn .  But still, they are one of the symbols of St. Petersburg .