Mon Bijou Pavilion (Menagerie)

A menagerie was founded in Tsarskoe Selo (1715). The neglected territory (1730s) was gradually transformed into a new regular garden (1740s). Savva Chevakinsky planned a hunting pavilion at the centre, built by Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli (1750–52). The hunting room was decorated with forty-three pictures of “various titles and all species of fowl and beasts” and paintings on hunting themes by German artist Johann Friedrich Grooth. The menagerie was surrounded by a stone wall with bastions at the corners. Two of the bastions contained entertainment pavilions. Mon Bijou was one of the main landmarks in Tsarskoe Selo for seventy years. The building was dismantled (late 18th century) and replaced by an Arsenal designed by Adam Menelaws (1830s).