Putsari
Putsari ( Russian Путсари , Finnish Putsaari, Putsalo ) is a small island in Lake Ladoga on Russian territory, which was also known as the island of Saint Sergei ( острове св. Сергия ). It has acquired a certain importance as a site for historical ashlar mining.
Topography and history
The island of Putsari is located in an archipelago in the north-western part of Lake Ladoga.
Putsari has been using stone in Saint Petersburg since 1784. One of the earliest applications was through the unfinished work of Antonio Rinaldi in the base area of St. Isaac's Cathedral .
The abbot Damaskin bought the island for the Valaam monastery in 1866 and built a hermitage. At the same time they began to quarry the rock there. This led to a dispute with Finnish authorities who tried to prevent the dismantling by means of a court process in which the sale of the island was to be reversed. This dispute dragged on until 1869 and was ended by the intervention of Tsar Alexander II. As Grand Duke of Finland, he had taken over the island into his own property and then handed it over to the monastery. For some of the monastery's buildings, blocks were obtained from putsari.
On the island, not far from the largest bay, Laurinlathi Bay, there is a brick church and in the southern part of the island there is a granite cross with the year 1879. The cross commemorates the handover of the island by the Russian tsar to the Valaam monastery. On June 1, 1902, the iron meteorite (palassite) Marjalahti (Марьялахти) fell near the island .
In 1941 a naval battle took place in the region between Colonel Bondarev's 168th Rifle Divisions and enemy troops.
Natural stone from Putsari
The most important working stone on the island was the particularly sought-after granite putsari ( гранит Путсари ). It is a red alkali granite (microcling granite ) with a medium to coarse-grain structure with a trachytic structure. It was used as a particularly attractive decorative stone in Saint Petersburg for representative purposes.
The extraction of the granite was very complex, because the rough blocks had to be transported from a quarry in the interior of the island to a loading station on its coast in order to get from there to the destination by ship.
Furthermore, a gray and gray-pink natural stone was broken on this island . It is a granite and a granodiorite (variety Riauniemi / Ряуниеми).
The entire archipelago consists of rocks, the age of which is classified at around 1.8 billion years. It is an intrusive complex with gabbros and diabases and rocks of the syenitic-dioritic type . This region is called Valaamski Granite ( валаамский гранит ), which is not connected to the island in the geological sense, but got its name from the economic activities of the monastery with the rocks. The stone was extracted in quarries on Putsari and Mantinsaari, near the settlements of Ljaskelja and Pitkjaranty.
Application examples of the granite
- Pedestal of the monument of Catherine II in Saint Petersburg
- Pedestal of the third St. Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg
literature
- М. С. Зискинд: Декоративно-облицовочные камни . Ленинград (Недра) 1989, стр. 18-25
Web links
- Description of the island (Russian text)
- Description of the region (Russian text)
- Description of the stone (Russian text)
Coordinates: 61 ° 31 ' N , 30 ° 35' E