Monument

Column of the Two Emperors

Address: парк Монрепо, остров Колонны
Area: Vyborg, Russia
Districts: Monrepos

Mon: 09:00–18:00
Tue: 09:00–18:00
Wed: 09:00–18:00
Thu: 09:00–18:00
Fri: 09:00–18:00
Sat: 09:00–18:00
Sun: 09:00–18:00
Hours: From 18:00 to 20:00 the park is open for exit only; the eco-trail closes at 17:00.
Price: Park admission: adults — 500 RUB; foreign visitors over 16 — 1,000 RUB.
How to visit: The column is on an island reached via the Chinese Bridge from the park grounds. A park admission ticket is required; animals are not allowed.
Hours: Ticket required
Hours: About 15 min

Why it is worth the detour

Ludwig Nicolay raised this marble column as an unusually candid monument to patronage: Paul I had advanced his career, while Alexander I made Monrepos the Nicolays' hereditary estate. Its lost Latin inscription adapted Virgil to declare that Caesar had granted the family its place of repose.

The Column of the Two Emperors is a marble monument in Vyborg, Russia, celebrating the patronage of Ludwig Nicolay by Paul I and Alexander I. It is a hidden gem with historical significance due to its unique dedication.

The people behind this address

Documented connections, not celebrity trivia.

Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay
Created here
He erected the column to acknowledge the imperial favors that secured both his career and his estate.

What else is close by

The nearest places we have written up, with straight-line distance from here.

50 m
Chinese Bridges
These humpbacked bridges appeared in 1798 after a canal was cut to separate Column Island and regulate the estate's water system. Originally painted in several colors like opened fans, both disappeared in the Soviet period and were reconstructed by the Finnish Pro Monrepos association in 1998 and 2002, this time in white.
100 m
Pampusinka Island
Paul von Nicolay reshaped this tiny island from scattered stones into a garden composition and named it after his childhood nickname, "Pampusinka." It became a favorite place of his mother Johanna, who sat by the water remembering her son while his diplomatic career kept him far from Monrepos.
150 m
Marienturm Hill
A wooden Chinese-style viewing tower once stood here, crowned by a dragon and named for the future Empress Maria Feodorovna. Tradition held that its Pompeian-style wall paintings followed her own sketches, but the pavilion has vanished; a wooden platform now marks the site and preserves the intended view.
300 m
Broglie Obelisk
A marble obelisk commemorating the Broglie brothers, who died in the Napoleonic Wars.
300 m
Tea Pavilion
The late-19th-century pavilion disappeared around the middle of the 20th century and was rebuilt on its original foundation in 2002 using photographs because no drawings survived. Its recovered Romantic view later became a film set for a love scene in Eldar Ryazanov's 2006 Hans Christian Andersen drama "A Life Without Love."
400 m
Temple of Neptune
The pavilion began as Nicolay's Temple of Piety, containing a figure of the Roman goddess Pietas with a child; only later did a statue of Neptune move inside and give it its present name. The decayed original was dismantled in 1948, a 1999 reconstruction burned in 2011, and the temple was recreated yet again in 2018.