A commemorative art object to Alexander Pushkin and his Lyceum years is now installed in the Catherine Park as a reminder of the importance that Tsarskoe Selo had in the life and work of the great Russian poet whose 225th birth anniversary is celebrated in 2024.

In 1811-17 Pushkin spent six years as a student of the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo which he called his 'poetic fatherland'. The art object combines a student's bicorne hat, an open book, and a few apples like those that Lyceum students would pick in the nearby gardens.

Placed on a park bench, the bronze composition refers to the lines from poetess Anna Akhmatova's poem At Tsarskoe Selo (1911):
     Here rested his tricorne*
     And a worn-out volume by de Parny

* Although the Russian word in the poem means 'tricorne', the hat is a bicorne because both tricorne and bicorne hats were called 'tricorne' in Russia, the term 'bicorne' was never used.

The author of the art object is Tatiana Kunchukina, a trainee sculptor at the Russian Academy of Arts in Moscow. Tatiana was assisted by the company PSB ZhilStroy. While working on the concept of the art object, she looked through lots of historical sources including La Guerre des Dieux (The War of the Gods) of 1796 by the French Rococo poet Évariste de Forges de Parny. Her original idea of combining a nineteenth-century student's book, hat and overcoat was finally transformed into the 'hat, book and apples' composition which is now gracing the Catherine Park.