No Rest for ‘Mon Repos’
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 Category: At Risk No Comments 
A remarkable landscape park spectacularly set on the edge of the Gulf of Finland near St Petersburg is in urgent need of funding. Strasbourg-born Baron Ludwig Heinrich von Nikolai, lawyer, poet, diplomat and confidant of royalty, acquired the 160-acre site in 1788 and spent the last 17 years of his life creating an English-style park there. Named ‘Mon Repos’, it features a number of follies, sculpture and rare plants and wildlife. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the area became part of Finland, reverting to Russia again after the Second World War. Since then, the Finns and the Russians have disagreed about the cultural ‘ownership’ of ‘Mon Repos’ but neither side has been able to protect it.
The estate was used in turn as a sanatorium, kindergarten, municipal park and residential housing. By the 1980s it was in a state of such decay that a group of Soviet enthusiasts, guided by the famous academician D.S. Likhachev, set up a project to turn the house into a museum and the park into a nature reserve. Recently the early-19th century mansion, the temple of Neptune and the Tea Arbour were restored by a Finnish voluntary organisation, ‘Park Mon Repos’. but this is now facing severe financial difficulties. The wooden library pavilion, which stands in front of the house, is almost in ruins and many other features are under threat. If you would like to help or know more, please contact Irina Lankinen at the ‘Park Mon Repos’ association in Helsinki on +00 35 8 9 801 6621. Alla Vronskaya (June 2007)