Toboggan-Slide Pavilion (Saint Petersburg)

 museum, Baroque (architecture), listed building / architectural heritage, 18th century construction

Architect: Antonio Rinaldi, late 1750s - 1774

The Toboggan-Slide Pavilion in the territory of the landscape gardening ensemble of the Private Dacha represents a part of the former entertainment construction of the summer toboggan-slides. The national winter entertainment - sliding down ice hills was widely popular at the Russian Court in the 18th century. There were two unique architectural constructions, the Toboggan-Slide at Tsarskoe Selo, constructed in 1753-1757 for winter and summer sliding, and the Toboggan-Slide at Oranienbaum, built in 1762-1774 for summer-time sliding only. Both slides were created after Antonio Rinaldi's projects and with technical calculations made by A.K. Nartov.

The complex of the Toboggan-Slide, besides the pavilion, included wooden slides - one straight and three wavy ones, and covered galleries of colonnades 532 meters long. The upper platform was at the height of 20 meters. As vehicles they used carved gilt carriages, specially designed by Nartov. They were in the shape of "triumphal chariots, gondolas, and saddled animals". Besides the tracks for sliding down there were two more lateral ones for lifting up the carriages.

The survived pavilion of the Toboggan-Slide represents a 33-metre three-story stone building, with a round drum at the top, decorated with carved garlands, with a bell-shaped dome, which used to be crowned with a wooden gilt statue of Terpsichore, the Muse of singing and dances.

After the death of Catherine II the funds, allocated for the maintenance of the Toboggan-Slide, were considerably reduced and the construction started to fall into decay and collapse. The last toboggan sliding took place in 1801 Humidity destroyed the wooden tracks and the basements of the promenade galleries-colonnades, the right part of which fell down in 1813. At the time when the estate was given into property of Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich in 1831, the toboggan-slides represented «picturesque ruins», which were dismantled in the late 1850s.