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# Quite recently I wanted to write about the creation in the Leningrad Region of a "Park Agency", which will oversee the preservation of cultural monuments, their use, and the promotion of heritage sites
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/sovsem-nedavno-khotel-napisat-o-sozdanii-v-lenoblasti-parkovogo-agentstva-kotoroe-budet-sledit-za-sokhraneniem-kulturnykh-pamiatnikov-ikh-ispolzovaniem-i-populiarizirovat-obekty-kulturn/
- Published: 2020-08-04T15:54:45.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:42:26.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Observations, Heritage, Society, Saint Petersburg

Quite recently I wanted to write about the creation in the Leningrad Region of a ["Park Agency"](https://lenobl.ru/ru/dlya-smi/news/23936/?ref=theparnassian.com), which will oversee the preservation of cultural monuments, their use, and the promotion of heritage sites. Among the monuments coming under the agency's care are the Priory Park and the Demidov estate in the village of Taitsy in the Gatchina District, where matters have already got moving: rubbish is being carted away, paths cleared, public spaces laid out, and work on the woodland has begun.

The news is, on the whole, good, yet my pleasure over the provincial sites has given way to anxiety over events in the Northern Capital itself: with horror and indignation I watch Saint Petersburg dealing with the activists who are fighting to save the historic cobbles uncovered during road works. It is a wild story, with unscrupulous contractors and downright thuggish assaults on the public-spirited citizens who kept watch so that the cobbles would not be destroyed, but could not hold out, and all of it, naturally, with the connivance of the city authorities.

In brief: in mid-July they began digging on Rimsky-Korsakov Avenue in order to lay paving slabs, but found cobbles; concerned people got involved, tried to secure protected status, cleared the paving and, by some miracle, obtained from the heritage protection committee an order for its musealisation. Then, out of nowhere, a gang of lads on bulldozers turned up, swiftly ripped up the paving and began carting it off together with the soil in a dump truck, while shoving aside, without ceremony, the activists who tried to stop them. In short, an outrage. Today, in the wake of all this, a hearing was held at the Committee for State Control, Use and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, where the contractor was ordered to relay the cobbles. All that remains is to follow the proceedings with bated breath, considering the competence and working methods of that organisation.