The Bronze Horseman is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in Senate Square, Saint Petersburg. Catherine the Great commissioned it. The French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet made it, and his apprentice Marie-Anne Collot modeled the tsar's face from his death mask and portraits. It was unveiled in 1782. The inscriptions read "Catherine the Second to Peter the First."
The statue is about 20 feet (6 meters) tall and stands on a pedestal of about 23 feet (7 meters). The pedestal is a single granite boulder called the Thunder Stone, found at Lakhta. About 400 men moved it over frozen ground and by barge. Emelyan Khailov supervised the bronze casting.
Pushkin's 1833 poem "The Bronze Horseman" made the name popular. During the 900-day Siege of Leningrad, the statue was covered with sandbags and a wooden shelter, and it survived virtually untouched.
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