Park & garden

Pampusinka Island

Address: парк Монрепо, остров Пампушинка
Area: Vyborg, Russia

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-route closes at 17:00. The 09:00–18:00 schedule applies from October 1 to April 30.
Price: Park admission: adult ticket — 500 ₽; free for visitors under 16.
How to visit: Enter through the central gate with a ticket. Pampusinka Island is reached via the second Chinese bridge and a small wooden bridge; pets are not allowed.
Hours: Ticket required
Hours: About 30 min

Pampusinka Island — Маргарита2021, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why it is worth the detour

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.

Pampusinka Island is a hidden gem in Vyborg, Russia, reshaped into a picturesque garden by Paul von Nicolay. It offers a serene escape with historical significance, as it was a beloved spot for Nicolay's mother.

The people behind this address

Documented connections, not celebrity trivia.

Paul von Nicolay
Created here
He planned the island's landscape and named it after his childhood nickname.

What else is close by

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

100 m
Column of the Two Emperors
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.
100 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.
100 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.
350 m
Broglie Obelisk
A marble obelisk commemorating the Broglie brothers, who died in the Napoleonic Wars.
350 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."
450 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.