The history of the Winter Palace begins with the reign of Peter I.
The very first, then still the Winter House, was built for Peter I in 1711 on the banks of the Neva. The first Winter Palace was two-storey, with a tiled roof and a high porch. In 1719-1721, the architect Georg Mattornovi built a new palace for Peter I.
Empress Anna Ioannovna considered the Winter Palace too small and did not want to settle in it. She commissioned the construction of the new Winter Palace to the architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli. For new construction, the houses of Count Apraksin, Raguzinsky and Chernyshev, located on the embankment of the Neva River, as well as the building of the Naval Academy, were purchased. They were demolished, and by 1735 a new Winter Palace was built in their place. At the end of the 18th century, the Hermitage Theater was erected on the site of the old palace.
Empress Elizaveta Petrovna also wished to remake the imperial residence to her taste. The construction of the new palace was entrusted to the architect Rastrelli. The Winter Palace project created by the architect was signed by Elizaveta Petrovna on June 16, 1754.
In the summer of 1754, Elizaveta Petrovna issued a nominal decree on the beginning of the construction of the palace. The required amount - about 900 thousand rubles - was withdrawn from the "tavern" money (collection from the drinking trade). The previous palace was demolished. During construction, the yard moved to a temporary wooden palace built by Rastrelli on the corner of Nevsky and Moika.
The palace was notable for its incredible size for those times, magnificent exterior decoration and luxurious interior decoration.
The Winter Palace is a three-storey rectangular building with a huge front yard inside. The main facades of the palace face the embankment and the square that was formed later.
Creating the Winter Palace, Rastrelli designed each facade differently, based on specific conditions. The northern façade, facing the Neva, stretches like a more or less even wall, without noticeable ledges. From the side of the river, it is perceived as an endless two-tiered colonnade. The southern façade, overlooking the Palace Square and having seven articulations, is the main one. Its center is highlighted by a wide, richly decorated risalit cut through by three entrance arches. Behind them is the main courtyard, where in the middle of the northern building was the main entrance to the palace.
Along the perimeter of the roof of the palace there is a balustrade with vases and statues (originally made of stone in 1892-1894 were replaced by a brass knockout).
The length of the palace (along the Neva) is 210 meters, width - 175 meters, height - 22 meters. The total area of the palace is 60 thousand square meters, it has more than 1000 halls, 117 different staircases.
There were two chains of ceremonial halls in the palace: along the Neva and in the center of the building. In addition to the ceremonial halls, on the second floor there were living quarters of members of the imperial family. The first floor was occupied by utility and service premises. The apartments of the courtiers were mainly located on the upper floor.
About four thousand employees lived here, even had its own army - palace grenadiers and guards from the guards regiments. The palace had two churches, a theater, a museum, a library, a garden, an office, and a pharmacy. The halls of the palace were decorated with gilded carvings, luxurious mirrors, chandeliers, candelabra, patterned parquet.
Under Catherine II, a winter garden was organized in the Palace, where both northern plants and plants brought from the south grew, the Romanov Gallery; at the same time, the formation of St. George's Hall was completed. Under Nicholas I, a gallery of 1812 was organized, where 332 portraits of participants in the Patriotic War were placed. The architect Auguste Montferrand added the Petrovsky and Field Marshal's Halls to the palace.
In 1837, a fire broke out in the Winter Palace. Many things were saved, but the building itself was badly damaged. But thanks to the architects Vasily Stasov and Alexander Bryullov, the building was restored two years later.
In 1869, instead of candlelight, gas lighting appeared in the palace. Since 1882, the installation of telephones in the premises began. In the 1880s, a water pipe was built in the Winter Palace. At Christmas 1884-1885, electric lighting was tested in the halls of the Winter Palace; from 1888, gas lighting was gradually replaced by electric lighting. For this, a power plant was built in the second hall of the Hermitage, which for 15 years was the largest in Europe.
In 1904, Emperor Nicholas II moved from the Winter Palace to the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. The Winter Palace became a place for ceremonial receptions, ceremonial dinners, and the seat of the king during short visits to the city.
Throughout the history of the Winter Palace as an imperial residence, the interiors were redesigned in accordance with fashion trends. The building itself changed the color of its walls several times. The Winter Palace was painted in red, pink, yellow colors. Before the First World War, the palace was painted red-brick.
During the First World War, there was an infirmary in the building of the Winter Palace. After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government worked in the Winter Palace. In the post-revolutionary years, various departments and institutions were located in the building of the Winter Palace. In 1922, part of the building was transferred to the Hermitage Museum.
In 1925 - 1926 the building was rebuilt again, now for the needs of the museum.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Winter Palace suffered from air raids and shelling. In the cellars of the palace there was a dispensary for scientists and cultural figures who suffered from dystrophy. In 1945-1946, restoration work was carried out, at the same time the entire Winter Palace became part of the Hermitage.
At present, the Winter Palace, together with the Hermitage Theatre, the Small, New and Large Hermitage, forms a single museum complex "The State Hermitage".
M. Zichy. Ball in the Concert Hall of the Winter Palace during the official visit of Shah Nasir ad-Din in May 1873Empress Elizabeth, wishing to surpass the luxury of the palaces of European monarchs, ordered the chief architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli to build a grandiose building in the center of St. Petersburg. In 1754, the project of the Winter Palace, designed in a magnificent baroque style, was approved. Later, some changes were made to it, bringing Baroque liberties closer to the strict standards of classicism. Large-scale construction was not completed during the reign of Elizabeth, and only Catherine II became the first sovereign mistress of the Winter Palace. Under her, work continued on the arrangement of the interior. So, the Great Throne Hall, known as St. George's, was decorated. Since 1764, Catherine began to collect a collection of paintings from the Hermitage and commission architects to build additional buildings in the immediate vicinity of the Winter Palace. In the future, they will be united by a system of transitions into a palace complex.
Under Nicholas I, work on the interiors of the Winter Palace was continued. In 1837, due to a malfunction of the chimney, a terrible fire broke out in the building, which destroyed the historical decoration of the halls - the projects of Quarenghi, Rossi, Montferrand. In addition, it was necessary to equip the southwestern wing of the second floor with chambers for the heir to the throne, Alexander II, who was about to marry. Most of the works of this period were made by Vasily Stasov and Alexander Bryulov.
In 1904, under Nicholas II, the Winter Palace ceded the right to be called the imperial residence to the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo. The building continued to be used for museum purposes. With the outbreak of the First World War, part of the collections was taken to Moscow, and the spacious halls were given over to hospitals. After the February Revolution, the Winter Palace became the meeting place of the Provisional Government. It was here, in the Small Dining Room on the second floor, that his ministers were arrested during the October Revolution. A week later, all collections were declared state property and the Winter Palace officially became part of the Hermitage museum complex. During World War II, all collections were evacuated to the Urals. Since the autumn of 1945, the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg has been receiving visitors as usual. Archaeological collections, works of artists and sculptors, works of arts and crafts of Asian countries, England and France are now stored here.
Facade facing the Neva
Architectural features of the building
By the time Rastrelli received the order, two Winter Palaces had already been erected in St. Petersburg, but their size and decoration of the halls did not correspond to the high status of the imperial residence. The new building, at the request of Elizabeth, was distinguished by the height of the ceilings and the splendor of the decoration characteristic of the Baroque - stucco, sculptures, gilding, draperies from expensive fabrics. The facade of the Winter Palace was decorated with two tiers of snow-white columns with gold stucco. The distances between the columns are different - so the architect, skillfully using the play of light and shadow, created a complex rhythmic pattern. Places on the roof were occupied by patinated antique statues, vases, symbols of Russian statehood were also erected here. By the way, greenish-blue facades have become only in our time. Historically, the walls were yellowish sand, later they were painted in richer yellows and browns.
Dimensions of the Winter Palace
Elizabeth insisted that the height of the Winter Palace should be 22 m, an unprecedented size for St. Petersburg. As a result, the building exceeded the set bar by another 1.5 m. The facade facing the Neva was extended by 210 m, the Admiralty side was slightly shorter - 175 m. Subsequently, Nicholas I made sure that there were no competitors to the palace in the capital, limiting the height of new buildings.
In total, the Winter Palace had more than 1,000 rooms - for official ceremonies, for storing collections, the private quarters of the emperor and the heirs to the throne and their retinue, and a huge number of utility rooms to serve the needs of the people living here.
Tours of the Winter Palace
It is extremely difficult to see all the halls of the Winter Palace at one time, so tourists should think over routes in advance. On the ground floor, archeological collections collected from all over the former Soviet Union are presented. From an architectural point of view, the apartments of the daughters of Nicholas I, located in the wing overlooking the Neva, are interesting. On the second floor there are halls that have become the hallmark of the Winter Palace: Throne, Bolshoi, Petrovsky - and private rooms of members of the imperial family, in which objects of Western European art are exhibited. The third floor is dedicated to Asia.
First floor halls
The lower floor is not as popular among visitors as the second, however, even here, each hall contains unique exhibits obtained by archaeologists.
Private quarters of the emperor's daughters
The former apartments of the daughters of Nicholas I in the Winter Palace were given over to the archaeological collection. In the hall there are finds from the Paleolithic era, in the bright Gothic living room with pointed arches and medieval plant reliefs - Neolithic and early Bronze Age. The decor of the "Living Room with Cupids" appeared in the 50s of the XIX century. The architect Stackenschneider did not stint on fat-cheeked cupids: babies with wings hid in the arches, reliefs with their images adorned the ceiling. Now these scenery houses a collection of antiquities from the Bronze Age. In the study of Olga Nikolaevna, the future Queen of Württemberg, the architect acted much more delicately: thin golden curves in the upper part of the ceiling vaults set off Bronze Age artifacts. Nearby are simple rooms without decor, given over to Scythian archaeological collections of weapons, ceramics, and jewelry.
Guardhouse premises
From the “female” wing, the Kutuzovsky corridor with modest columns leads the guests of the Winter Palace past the former guardhouse, now given over to the halls of art of the peoples of Altai and other regions of Siberia. The world's oldest pile carpet, woven in the 4th-3rd centuries, is stored here. BC e. In the middle, the corridor leads to the vestibule of the Saltykovsky entrance, designed in the same style, from which doors lead to the halls of ancient Altai and Tuvan art, nomadic tribes of Southern Siberia.
Collection of Central Asian and Caucasian Antiquities
The Kutuzovsky corridor leads visitors to the southwestern wing, dedicated to the art of Central Asia of the pre-Islamic period. Buddhist shrines, fragments of wall paintings, fabrics, household items, silver, stone statues, decorative elements of buildings from Sogdiana and Khorezm are collected here. At the other end of the wing there are halls dedicated to the culture of the Caucasus. The artifacts left over from the state of Urartu are of the greatest value. They were found under the guidance of academician Boris Piotrovsky, the former director of the museum, the father of the current one, Mikhail Piotrovsky. Nearby, perfectly preserved precious fabrics from the Ossetian Moshcheva Balka, an important Caucasian point of the Silk Road, are exhibited. Dagestan halls showcase fine bronze cauldrons, weapons and copper thread embroidery made in the 19th century. Volga Bulgaria, the state of the "Golden Horde" on the territory of the modern Volga region, is represented in the Winter Palace with silver and gold jewelry and weapons, painted underglaze ceramics. In the Transcaucasian halls one can see Georgian medieval weapons, objects of religious worship, Armenian book miniatures and fragments of architectural structures.
Middle East and North Africa
In the opposite wing is the Hall of Culture of Palmyra, an ancient Syrian city whose ruins were severely damaged during the recent hostilities in that country. In the collection of the Hermitage there are funerary stelae, customs documentation carved on stone. In the hall of Mesopotamia, you can see authentic cuneiform tablets from Assyria and Babylon. The vaulted Egyptian Hall, converted in 1940 from the Main Canteen of the Winter Palace, is located in front of the passage to the building of the Small Hermitage. Among the masterpieces of the collection is a stone statue of King Amenechmet III, created almost 4,000 years ago.
Second floor of the Winter Palace
The northeast wing of the second floor is temporarily closed - its collections have moved to the General Staff building. Next to it is the Grand Throne, or St. George's Hall of the Winter Palace, designed by Giacomo Quarenghi and remodeled after the fire by Vasily Stasov. Carrara marble, a unique parquet made of 16 types of wood, an abundance of columns with bronze gilding, mirrors and powerful lamps are designed to draw attention to the throne standing on a dais, ordered in England for the Empress Anna Ioannovna. The huge room turns into the relatively small Apollo Hall, which connects the Winter Palace with the Small Hermitage.
Military gallery of the Winter Palace
Large front suite
You can get to the Throne Room through the Military Gallery of 1812, which contains the works of George Dow and the artists of his studio - more than 300 portraits of Russian generals, participants in the Napoleonic Wars. The gallery was designed by the architect Carlo Rossi. On the other side of the gallery is a suite of state rooms. The Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace, designed by Stasov, contains the symbols of the Russian provinces and solid stone bowls made of aventurine. The Petrovsky, or Small Throne Room, conceived by Montferrand and restored by Stasov, is dedicated to Peter I. Its walls are decorated with burgundy Lyon velvet embroidered with gold, the ceiling is covered with gold reliefs. The throne was commissioned for the imperial family at the end of the 18th century. The White Field Marshal's Hall houses Western European porcelain and sculpture.
A. Ladurner. The Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace. 1834
Neva enfilade
The anteroom is the first in a series of ceremonial rooms overlooking the Neva. Its main attraction - a French rotunda with 8 malachite columns supporting a gilded bronze dome - was placed here in the middle of the last century. Through the Anteroom opens the entrance to the largest room of the Winter Palace - the Nicholas Hall, with Corinthian columns and a monochrome painting of the ceiling. It does not have a permanent exhibition, only temporary exhibitions are organized. On the opposite side of the Nicholas Hall is the snow-white Concert Hall with paired Corinthian columns and antique reliefs. Adjacent to the Neva Enfilade is the Romanov Portrait Gallery, which contains portraits of members of the imperial family, starting with Peter I.
Part of the northwestern wing is temporarily closed, including the Arapsky Hall with Greek decor that served as a dining room. The Rotunda is waiting for guests - a spacious round hall with rectangular and round Corinthian columns, a simple circular balcony in the second tier, a ceiling with recesses-caissons decorated with reliefs. Particularly effective is the floor with circular inlays of valuable wood species. The small halls leading from the Neva Enfilade to the apartments of the heir to the throne, overlooking the Dark Corridor, were given over to objects of art of the 18th century.
Private quarters of the emperor and empress
Emperor Nicholas I did not spare money for interiors, so each room of private quarters is a real masterpiece of design art. Alexandra Fedorovna's malachite living room is decorated with emerald green vases, columns, and a fireplace. The richly ornamented floor and carved ceiling are in perfect harmony with the exhibition - objects of arts and crafts. Nearby is the Small Dining Room, decorated in the Rococo style. Gambs furniture, the best craftsman of this era, was chosen for the Empress's study. Sketches of furniture for the adjacent room were made by the architect Carlo Rossi. The emperor's smoking room impresses with its oriental splendor and bright colors. Not many halls are associated with the name of Nicholas II in the Winter Palace - the last emperor preferred other residences. His library has been preserved with high windows in the English Gothic style and a carved fireplace, imitating a medieval book depository.
Interiors of Russian houses in the Winter Palace
In the imperial wing, rooms are equipped that reproduce the interiors of urban wealthy houses of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The neo-Russian style is represented by pieces of furniture from the 1900s with fabulous folk motifs. In the former Adjutantskaya there is an original ash suite in the Art Nouveau style. The austere neoclassical interior is enlivened by a bright portrait of Princess Yusupova. The "second" rococo of the middle of the 19th century is no less magnificent than the samples of a hundred years ago. The “Pompeian dining room” with Gambs furniture refers the viewer to archaeological finds. The Gothic office is decorated with furniture from the Golitsyn-Stroganov estate, reproducing the forms of the European knightly Middle Ages - carved backs and armrests of chairs, gloomy wood tones. Boudoir - the former dressing room of Alexandra Feodorovna with brightly painted furniture of the 40-50s. XIX century. The living room of the manor house with white columns demonstrates a strict classic interior.
The chambers of the future Emperor Alexander II and his wife
In the southwestern part of the second floor of the Winter Palace are the chambers of Alexander II, equipped in those days when he was the heir to the throne and was preparing for the wedding. From an architectural point of view, the rooms occupied by the future Empress Maria Alexandrovna are noteworthy: the Green Dining Room with lush rococo decor, the White Hall with many reliefs and sculptures, the Golden Living Room with complex stucco ornamentation, parquet and jasper fireplace, the Crimson Cabinet with textile wallpaper, the Blue bedroom with golden columns.
Collection of Western European Art
In the wing of the heir to the throne and in the enfilade dedicated to the victory in the war of 1812, paintings and works of decorative art from Great Britain and France are kept: works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Watteau, Boucher, Grez, Fragonard, Lorrain, the famous bust of Voltaire, made by Houdon. The southeast wing houses the Alexander Hall, designed in noble white and blue tones, combining elements of Gothic and classicism with a collection of silver items. Next to it is the Great Church, designed by Rastrelli in the Baroque style. The picket hall, where the palace guard was bred, is temporarily closed.
Third floor
The functioning halls on the third floor of the Winter Palace are dedicated to the Islamic art of the Middle East, Byzantium, the state of the Huns, India, China, and Japan. Among the most valuable exhibits are finds from the Cave of 1000 Buddhas, ancient Chinese furniture and ceramics, Buddhist relics, treasures of Tibet.
Information for tourists
How to get there
The official address of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg: Palace Square, 2. The nearest metro station is Admiralteyskaya, from which you need to walk a little more than 100 meters to the north. The bus stop "Palace Embankment" is located to the west of Zimny. Inside the palace there are lifts for wheelchair users and elevators. You must enter the museum through the main turnstile.
Ticket prices and opening hours
A visit to the entire Hermitage complex, including the Winter Palace, costs 600 rubles, on the first Thursday of the month you can go for free. If you want to visit only the Winter Palace, then a ticket for 300 rubles will suffice. Tickets are recommended to be purchased in advance via the Internet, so as not to stand in line at the box office or at the terminal. This can be done on the official website www.hermitagemuseum.org. Children and students, Russian pensioners are a privileged category, receiving free tickets. The day off is Monday, access to tourists is open from 10:30 to 18:00, on Wednesday and Friday - until 21:00. The Winter Palace is closed on New Year's Eve and May 9th.
Winter Palace on Palace Square - the former royal residence, a symbol of the architectural style of the Elizabethan Baroque, the largest palace in St. Petersburg. Since the first Soviet years, the most famous museum in Russia, the State Hermitage Museum, has been operating here.
First Winter Palaces. Winter Palace of Anna Ioannovna
On the site of the world-famous St. Petersburg Winter Palace, the first building appeared under Peter I. In June-July 1705, a wooden house of Admiral Fyodor Matveyevich Apraksin was built in the northwestern corner of the site occupied by the current palace. It was designed by the architect Domenico Trezzini. The place was chosen by the admiral, among other things, because of the rules of the "fortification esplanade". They demanded that the nearest building be at least 200 sazhens (1 sazhen = approximately 2.1 meters) away from the fortress, i.e. from the Admiralty.
The house of the Olonets commandant I. Ya. Yakovlev was immediately attached to Apraksin's house, who from January 1705 supervised the construction of the shipyard and the procurement of supplies for it. On June 28, Meshchersky notified Yakovlev: " According to the drawing, your closets 13 were cut down next to each other and placed on the moss, the underside bridge was paved, the upper ceiling was being paved"[Quoted from 5: p. 33].
Yakovlev died on January 22, 1707. The same time in many sources is indicated as the year of the appearance to the south of Apraksin's house of the house of A.V. Kikin, who continued the work of Yakovlev. It can be assumed that Kikin occupied the Yakovlev section. Apraksin's house, as the first one built on Palace Embankment, set its red line. Kikin's house marked the northern border of the Admiralty Meadow (future Palace Square).
It is worth noting that Peter I and Catherine I did not live here. The first Winter Palace of Peter was built on the site of house number 32 on Palace Embankment, where the Hermitage Theater is now located. This building was repeatedly rebuilt, the founder of St. Petersburg died in it.
Apraksin's house was rebuilt in stone in 1712. He soon ceased to suit the admiral, who wanted to live in more luxurious surroundings. The construction that began in 1716 determined the new red line of the future Palace Embankment. She was moved closer in the river by about 50 meters. The famous architect Leblon, who arrived in St. Petersburg in November of the same year, agreed to make a project for the two-story Apraksin Palace "in the French manner." Due to constant employment, Leblon was unable to complete this project. The construction plan was revised by the architect Fyodor Vasiliev. At the same time, he added a third floor to the building and somewhat redesigned its facade. At the same time, to the east of the admiral's possession, plots were allocated to S. V. Raguzinsky, P. I. Yaguzhinsky and Major General G. Chernyshev.
After the execution of Kikin, the Naval Academy established in 1715 was located in his house. But since the premises received by the educational institution turned out to be cramped for him, in 1716 an additional hut building was added to the building. In April 1718, Apraksin pointed out " academic yard that was Kikina, finish building"[Quoted in: 5, p. 91].
The house of the Prosecutor General of the Senate P. I. Yaguzhinsky was built on the orders of Peter I at public expense. In June 1716, F. Vasiliev received a contract for its construction according to the project of the architect Mattarnovi. Until the end of the construction season, he undertook to build the building, with the exception of plaster work, for which he received a deposit of 1,198 rubles. But by autumn, the workers managed to put only the foundations. During the winter, the foundation of the house deteriorated so much that in June 1717 Vasiliev was ordered to redo everything. At the same time, the property of the architect was described, and in December Vasiliev was removed from work. From October 1718 to April 1720 he was kept in chains in the courtyard of the Office of City Affairs. The Yaguzhinsky Palace was completed by Mattarnovi, and after his death - by N.F. Gerbel. The construction of the building was completed in 1721.
In the Apraksin Palace in 1725, the newlyweds Duke of Holstein and the daughter of Peter I Anna temporarily lived. They were the first to occupy the “half” for high-ranking persons in these chambers. The chamber junker Berchholtz, who was here, noted that he:
"the largest and most beautiful in all of St. Petersburg, moreover, it stands on the Bolshaya Neva and has a very pleasant location. The house is all magnificently furnished and in the latest fashion, so that the king could decently live in it ..."
The last words of Berchholtz's quote turned out to be prophetic. In 1728 the admiral died. He bequeathed his property to his relatives. Apraksin was related to the Romanovs, he was the brother of Tsarina Martha, the second wife of the elder brother of Peter I. Therefore, something should have gone to the young emperor Peter II. The admiral bequeathed his Petersburg palace to him. However, Peter II never lived here, since he moved to Moscow.
With the accession to the throne of Empress Anna Ioannovna, St. Petersburg was returned to the capital status selected by Peter II. The new ruler needed to equip her residence here. The Winter Palace of Peter I did not satisfy the tastes of Anna Ioannovna, and in 1731 she decided to settle in the Apraksin Palace. At first, she entrusted its restructuring to Domenico Trezzini. Work began on December 27, 1731. For greater speed, the church and the chambers began to be cut from logs. But soon Anna Ioannovna replaced Trezzini with another architect - Rastrelli. It was he who could satisfy the desire of the Empress to live among splendor and luxury. Before the departure of the royal court from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Rastrelli provided a finished project, which was approved and began to be implemented on April 18, 1732.
The chief architect of the Winter House of Anna Ioannovna was not the famous Francesco Bartolomeo, but his father Bartolomeo Carlo Rastrelli. The son only helped his father, later attributing this work to himself. This is indicated by the following post by Jakob Stehlin:
"Rastrelli, Cavaliero del Ordine di Salvador of the Pope, built a large wing to the house of Admiral Apraksin, as well as a large hall, a gallery and a court theater.
His son was supposed to break everything and build a new winter palace for Empress Elizabeth in this place" [Cited by 2, p. 329].
For the new building, the house of the Naval Academy (Kikin's house) was demolished. This was necessary in order to arrange the main facade of the royal residence from the side of the Admiralty. From the side of the Neva, it could not be formalized due to the fact that the sections of Raguzinsky and Yaguzhinsky located from the east had not yet been redeemed. Their demolition, unlike the demolition of the Naval Academy building, would have taken longer.
On May 3, 1732, a decree was issued to allocate 200,000 rubles for the construction of the palace. On May 27, the laying ceremony took place. Construction proceeded very quickly. Already by August 22, the brick walls were ready, since November, painting and painting work began. The artistic decoration of the winter palace of Anna Ioannovna was carried out by Louis Caravaque, the carpentry work was carried out by the Frenchman Jean Michel.
The new third Winter Palace was fully completed in 1735, although Anna Ioannovna spent the winter of 1733-1734 here. From that time on, this building became the front imperial residence for 20 years, and Rastrelli in 1738 became the chief architect of the court of Her Imperial Majesty.
In the premises of the former palace of Apraksin, Rastrelli designed the imperial chambers. The facade of this house was not touched, it was only brought under a common roof with a new building. The length of the facade from the side of the Admiralty was 185 meters. There were two enfilades in the newly built end building: the windows of the rooms of the first enfilade overlooked the courtyard, the windows of the second - to the shipyard. The largest room in the enfilade from the side of the courtyard was the Light Gallery. It was located in the central risalit and had a length of 30, a width of 17 and a height of 7.5 meters. In the enfilade with windows on the Admiralty there were rooms of equal size, named after the colors used in their design: Yellow, Blue, Red, Green chambers. The most significant room of the Winter Palace of Anna Ioannovna was a huge, with an area of 1000 square meters. m., throne room. The Swedish scientist K. R. Burke, who lived in St. Petersburg in 1735-1737, wrote about him:
"The Great Hall is the most spacious I have ever seen, and is richly decorated with mirrors, artificial marble, as well as numerous gilded bas-reliefs and other decorations ... The ceiling is covered with painting on canvas - no doubt to speed up its creation, however, it is not known how long it will last. The painting was made by the court painter Caravaque - a narcissistic Frenchman who criticizes everything, and almost no one praises his work. The plot in the middle of the ceiling is the accession of Her Majesty to the throne. Religion and Virtue present her to Russia, which, on her knees, welcoming her, hands her crown. The clergy and the kingdoms of Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberia, as well as many Tatar and Kalmyk peoples, recognizing the power of Russia, stand side by side, expressing their joy. Four large picturesque images located around this middle and descending to the cornice represent many deeds , capable of especially glorifying the reign of Anna Ioannovna, namely: the power of the empire, mercy for criminals, high generosity and victory over enemies; on top, these words are written [except for Latin] also in Russian ... Along all the edges of the ceiling painting there are many virtues carved in relief in stone. The throne, or place for the imperial throne, is magnificent and is raised several steps above the floor, lined with oak parquet. At the very top, the state emblem is visible, and Mars and Pallas lie next to it. The sculpture in this and other places in the hall is nothing special, although the Swede who created it believes that he performed miracles; in any case, it seems to be better than others, for the creation of which, due to absurd haste, ship sculptors were actually used. However, the gilding here is much richer" [Quoted from: 5, m. 248, 249].
The Winter Palace of Anna Ioannovna had its own theater, located in its southern part. It became the first court theater in Russia designed in the European style. The hall was 27.5 meters long. There were 27 shops in the stalls, between which there were two aisles. A large royal box was set up in front of the middle shops. Along the perimeter of the hall there were 15 boxes decorated with light columns. Above them are two tiers, to which four stairs led. The decoration of the theater hall according to the drawing by Rastrelli was performed by the Italian Girolamo Bon. He also painted scenery and was engaged in theatrical machinery. The first rehearsal took place here on January 17, 1736, and the first performance three days later. During the performances, 40 soldiers were involved in moving the scenery. The repertoire of the theater was determined personally by the empress.
In the Winter Palace of Anna Ioannovna on July 2, 1739, Princess Anna Leopoldovna was betrothed to Prince Anton-Ulrich. The young Emperor John Antonovich was also brought here. He stayed here until November 25, 1741, when the daughter of Peter I, Elizabeth, took power into her own hands.
Elizaveta Petrovna wanted even more luxury than her predecessor, and the next year she set about rebuilding the imperial residence in her own way. Then she ordered to decorate for herself the rooms adjoining from the south to the Light Gallery. Next to her bedchamber were the "raspberry cabinet" and the Amber cabinet, built in 1743-1744. Later, during the dismantling of the third Winter Palace, the amber panels will be transported to Tsarskoe Selo and will become part of the famous Amber Room. Since the dimensions of the office were larger than the dimensions of the rooms where the panels were before (the Royal Palace in Berlin, the people's quarters in the Summer Garden), Rastrelli placed 18 mirrors between them.
In 1745, the wedding of the heir to the throne, Peter Fedorovich, and Princess Sophia Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst (the future Catherine II) was celebrated here. The design of this holiday was carried out by the architect Rastrelli.
For the growing needs of the Empress, more and more premises were required. In 1746, because of this, Rastrelli added an additional building on the side of the Admiralty, the main facade of which faced south. It was two-story, with a wooden top floor, the side facade rested against the canal at the Admiralty. That is, the Winter House has become even closer to the shipyard. A year later, a chapel, a soap house and other chambers were added to this building. The main goal of the new premises, even a year before their appearance, was the placement in the Winter House of the Hermitage, a secluded corner for intimate meetings. Two enfilades here led to the corner hall, in which there was a lifting table for 15 people. Elizaveta Petrovna realized this idea before Catherine II. Historian Yu. M. Ovsyannikov claims that the newlyweds Peter Fedorovich and Ekaterina Alekseevna needed a new building.
Winter Palace of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna
After the New Year's reception on January 1, 1752, the Empress decided to expand the Winter Palace. For this, the neighboring plots of Raguzinsky and Yaguzhinsky along the Palace Embankment were purchased. The mansions of the associates of Peter I Rastrelli was preparing not to demolish, but to re-arrange in the same style with the entire building. But in February of the following year, Elizabeth Petrovna's decree followed:
"... With a new house from the river and the courtyard, there will be considerable breaking and the construction of two outbuildings with stone buildings again, why compose a project and drawings for the chief architect de Rastrelli and submit them for the highest E. I. V. approbation ..."
Thus, Elizaveta Petrovna decided to demolish the houses of Raguzinsky and Yaguzhinsky, to build new buildings in their place. And also to build the southern and eastern buildings, closing the entire building in a square. Two thousand soldiers began construction work. They demolished houses on the embankment. At the same time, the laying of the foundations of the southern building, the main facade of the new Winter Palace, began from the side of the Admiralteisky Meadow. The premises in the former house of Apraksin were also rebuilt. Here they even removed the roof to raise the ceilings. Changes have been made to the Light Gallery, the Anteroom, the premises for the theater and ceremonial halls have been expanded. And in December 1753, Elizaveta Petrovna wished to increase the height of the Winter Palace from 14 to 22 meters...
In early January, all construction work was stopped. Rastrelli presented the new drawings to the Empress on the 22nd. Rastrelli suggested building the Winter Palace in a new location. But Elizaveta Petrovna refused to move her winter front residence. As a result, the architect decided to rebuild the entire building, using only in some places the old walls. The new project was approved by the decree of Elizabeth Petrovna on June 16, 1754:
“Because in St. Petersburg, our Winter Palace is not only for the reception of foreign ministers and for the administration at the Court on the established days of festive rites according to the greatness of Our Imperial dignity, but also for accommodation We cannot be satisfied with the necessary servants and things, for which We set out to to rebuild our Winter Palace with a large space in length, width and height, for which the restructuring, according to the estimate, will require up to 990 thousand rubles, which amount, spreading it over two years, it is impossible to take from our salt money. imagine from what income it is possible to take such an amount of 430 and 450 thousand rubles a year for that business, counting from the beginning of this 1754 and the next 1755, and that this be done immediately, so as not to miss the current winter route for preparing supplies for that building ".
On the same day, to manage the construction, the "Office of the Construction of the Winter House of Her Imperial Majesty" was created, headed by Lieutenant General Vilim Vilimovich Fermor.
Initially, the Senate allocated 859,555 rubles 81 kopecks for the construction of the Winter Palace [ibid.]. They were found "from the profitable tavern income", that is, from the profits received from the sale of vodka and wine. But this money was not enough. Therefore, on March 9, 1755, the Senate decreed:
"1) The rivers flowing into the Volkhov and the Ladoga Canal, as well as into the Neva River, Tosno, Miya and other rivers, along which you can get anything, - give the office of the office from the buildings for three years, so that no one neither forests nor firewood, not a stone there for other work, except for this office;
2) send masons, carpenters, carpenters, foundry workers, and other craftsmen along the line to St. Petersburg for construction;
3) to send 3,000 soldiers for the same purpose" [Cited in: 6, p. 121].
In order for the masters to come to St. Petersburg, each of them was given three rubles, regardless of the distance. But upon arrival in the capital, they traded with them in such a way that the craftsmen had to agree to the terms of the employer, since it was difficult to return home.
In November 1755, the production of sculptures began to be installed on the balustrade of the roof of the Winter Palace. Their sketches were made by Rastrelli, and the models for translation into stone were made by the carver Johann Franz Dunker. Stone sculptures were made under the guidance of the master Johann Antoni Zwenhof and, after his death, by the sculptor Josef Baumchen.
According to the calculations of the Chancellery from the buildings, the fourth Winter Palace was to be erected in three years. The first two were allocated for the construction of walls, and the third for interior decoration. The Empress planned the housewarming by the autumn of 1756, the Senate expected three years of construction.
After the approval of the project, Rastrelli did not make significant changes to it, but made adjustments to the internal interconnections of the premises. He placed the main halls on the second floor of the corner risalits. From the northeast, the Main Staircase was designed, from the northwest - the Throne Room, from the southeast - the church, from the southwest - the theater. They were connected by the Neva, western and southern suites of rooms. The architect allocated the first floor for office space, the third - for ladies-in-waiting and other servants. The apartments of the head of state were arranged in the southeastern corner of the Winter Palace, which is best illuminated by the sun. The halls of the Neva enfilade were intended for the reception of ambassadors and solemn ceremonies.
Together with the creation of the Winter Palace, Rastrelli was going to re-plan the entire Admiralty Meadow, to create a single architectural ensemble here. But this was not carried out.
Few builders of the Winter Palace found housing in neighboring settlements. Most built their huts right on the Admiralty Meadow. Thousands of serfs were employed in the construction of the palace. Seeing the workers flooding St. Petersburg, the sellers raised the prices of products. The office from the buildings was forced to cook food for the builders here, at the construction site. The cost of food was deducted from the salary. At the same time, sheepskin coats and boots were distributed to the poorest builders of the Winter Palace, and various benefits were made. It often turned out that after such a deduction the worker was even indebted to the employer. According to an eyewitness:
“Soon, from a change in climate, a lack of healthy food and from bad clothes, various diseases appeared ... Difficulties resumed, and sometimes worse from the fact that in 1756 many masons went around the world for non-payment of the money they earned, and even, as then told, they were dying of hunger" [Cit. according to: 2, p. 343].
After the appointment in 1757 of V. V. Fermor as the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, the post of construction manager was taken by the architect Yu. M. Felten.
The construction of the Winter Palace was delayed. In 1758, the Senate removed the blacksmiths from the construction site, as there was no one to tie the wheels of carts and cannons. At this time, Russia was at war with Prussia. There was a lack of not only workers, but also finances.
"The situation of the workers ... in 1759 presented a truly sad picture. The unrest continued throughout the construction and began to decrease only when some of the most important work ceased and several thousand people scattered home" [Cit. according to 2, p. 344].
The main building work was completed in the spring of 1761. Elizaveta Petrovna did not live to see the completion of construction, Peter III already accepted the job. By this time, the facades were finished, but many of the interiors were not yet ready. But the emperor was in a hurry. He entered the Winter Palace on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter) on April 6, 1762. On the day of the move, Archbishop Demetrius consecrated the court cathedral church in the name of the Resurrection of the Lord, and a divine service was held.
Presumably, the architect S. I. Chevakinsky took part in the decoration of the chambers of Peter III and his wife. J. Shtelin noted:
“At that time, in the large hall of the new Winter Palace, more than 100 sculptors were engaged in carving doors, windows, panels and other work, which Messrs. Dunker, Stahlmeier, Gillet and others undertook to perform in chord. For this they were given all the carvers from various Russian departments, who did not they received salaries there for this, but they had to receive it from the named contractors. But even these measures were still not enough, since they could not take up the most important decoration of the largest hall due to too many works that had to be done inside this large building " [Cit. by 5, p. 308].
At the solemn ceremony of consecrating the building, the architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli was awarded the Holstein Order, he received the rank of major general. The process of decorating the building continued until 1767. The construction of the royal residence cost 2,622,020 rubles 19 kopecks.
The first floor of the Winter Palace was occupied by large vaulted galleries with arches that pierced all parts of the building. On the sides of the galleries, service rooms were arranged, where the servants lived, the guards rested. Warehouses and utility rooms were also located here.
As planned by Rastrelli, the main halls of the Winter Palace were located in its corner volumes, as well as in the northern (Nevsky) and eastern suites. The north-eastern risalit was given over to the front Embassy (later renamed the Jordanian) staircase, from which a suite of five approximately equal in size anterooms led to the west along the Neva. Passing through them, one could get to the Throne Hall, which used almost the entire volume of the northwestern risalit. The southwestern volume of the building was occupied by the Palace Theater, and the southeastern one - by the Court Church. The southern and western suites were distributed under the living rooms of the imperial family.
Peter III attached great importance to the design of the Throne Hall. It remained in the same place where the Throne Hall of Anna Ioannovna was, but significantly increased in size and occupied the entire volume of the northwestern risalit. Its width remained equal to 28 meters, and its length increased from 34 to 49 meters. None of the halls of the city now existing has such dimensions. In the mezzanine of the Winter Palace, the emperor ordered a library to be built, for which four large rooms and two rooms were allocated for the librarian, who was then the State Councilor Shtelin.
The apartments of Peter III were closer to Palace Square and Millionnaya Street, his wife settled in rooms closer to the Admiralty. Beneath him, on the first floor, Peter III settled his favorite Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontsova.
The building included about 1500 rooms. The perimeter of its facades was about two kilometers. The Winter Palace became the tallest building in St. Petersburg. From 1844 to 1905, the decree of Nicholas I was in force in the city, limiting the height of private houses to one sazhen below the eaves of the Winter Palace.
The cornice of the Winter Palace was decorated with 176 statues and vases. They were carved from Pudost limestone according to Rastrelli's drawings by the German sculptor Boumchen. They were later whitewashed.
From the side of the Palace Embankment, the Jordanian entrance leads into the building, so named according to the royal custom to leave it on the feast of Epiphany to the hole cut through opposite, in the Neva, an ice hole - "Jordan".
Three entrances lead to the palace from the south facade. The one that is closer to the Admiralty - Her Imperial Majesty. From here there was the shortest path to the chambers of the empresses, as well as to the apartments of Paul I. Therefore, for some time it was called Pavlovsky, and before that - the Theater, as it led to the home theater arranged by Catherine II. Closer to Millionnaya Street is the Commandant's Entrance, where the services of the commandant of the palace were located. Rastrelli did not plan to block the entrance to the courtyard with a gate. He remained free.
In the summer of 1762, Peter III was killed, the construction of the Winter Palace was completed under Catherine II. First of all, the Empress removed Rastrelli from work, Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy became the manager at the construction site. For Catherine II, the interior of the palace was remodeled by the architect J. B. Vallin-Delamot. He broke down some walls, put new ones in their place. The architect said about this: I'm throwing walls at windows". At the same time, bay windows were created over the entrances of Her Imperial Majesty and the Commandant's, which were not in Rastrelli's project.
Especially for Catherine II, the palace church was re-consecrated on July 12, 1763 by His Grace Gabriel in the name of the Savior Not Made by Hands.
Almost immediately after her accession to the throne, Catherine II ordered to expand the space of the palace by building a new neighboring building - the Small Hermitage. There is no entrance from the street, the Small Hermitage can only be reached through the Winter Palace. In its halls, the Empress placed her richest collection of paintings, sculptures and applied arts. Later, the Great Hermitage and the Hermitage Theater joined this single complex.
The Empress settled in the Winter Palace only two years after her coronation, in 1764. She occupied the rooms of her late husband in the southeastern part of the palace. Vorontsova's place was taken by Ekaterina's favorite Grigory Orlov.
From the side of Palace Square, under Catherine II, there was a Reception Room, where her throne stood. In front of the reception room there was a cavalry room, where guards stood - cavaliers of the guard. Its windows overlook the balcony above the Commandant's entrance. From here one could get to the Diamond Room, where the Empress kept her jewels. Behind the Diamond Room, closer to Millionnaya Street, there was a dressing room, then a bedroom and a boudoir. Behind the White Hall was a dining room. The Light Room adjoined it. The dining room was followed by the Front Bedchamber, which a year later became the Diamond Chamber. In addition, the Empress ordered to equip a library, an office, and a lavatory for herself. Under Catherine, a winter garden and the Romanov Gallery were built in the Winter Palace.
The winter garden occupied an area of 140 square meters. Exotic bushes and trees grew in it, flower beds and lawns were arranged here. The garden was adorned with sculpture. There was a fountain in the center. According to the description of P. P. Svinin in the time of Catherine II, the Winter Garden looked like this:
"The winter garden occupies a large quadrangular space and contains flowering bushes of laurel and orange trees, always fragrant, green and in severe frosts. Canaries, robins, siskins flutter from branch to branch and glorify their freedom with sweet, loud singing or casually splash in a jasper pool, which, under Empress Catherine, was filled with Portuguese goldfish..." [op. according to: 3, p. 24, 25]
The first performance at the Palace Theater was given on December 14, 1763. Ballets, Italian operas, French and Russian tragedies and comedies were staged here. The first description of the theater of the Winter Palace was made by J. Shtelin in 1769:
"In the device of this new theater, which was laid by the chief architect Rastrelli during the reign of Empress Elizabeth and now had to be hastily completed, there was no lack of convenience, sufficient security and imperial splendor. Above the stalls in four tiers there were about 60 boxes, except for three but in front of the whole parterre and all the boxes, namely on the pediment of the stage, there was a dial of a large clock illuminated from the inside, which showed the audience hours and minutes, and during long-drawn-out performances saved them from the usual troubles often take out a pocket watch" [Cit. according to: 5, p. 440].
I. Bernoulli described the theater in 1777 as follows:
“Although the theater itself is somewhat smaller than the opera house in Berlin and the proscenium is narrower, the stalls, on the contrary, seemed longer to me. The theater has four rows of boxes and is not very magnificent. The empress has three seats: one is completely behind, opposite the stage, like the queen’s box in Berlin , one just behind the orchestra, like our king, and one above the proscenium for visiting incognito" [Ibid.].
The court cathedral of the Image of the Savior Not Made by Hands was used during especially solemn occasions. In everyday life, the imperial family used the Small Court Church of the Presentation of the Lord, founded in 1768, in the northwestern part of the palace.
At the request of Catherine II, the central entrance to the courtyard in 1771 was blocked with pine gates. They were made in just 10 days according to the design of the architect Felten.
Cats have been living in the Winter Palace since Catherine's times. The first of them were brought from Kazan. They protect the property of the palace from rats.
From the first years of her life in the Winter Palace, Catherine II created a certain schedule of events held here. Balls were held on Sundays, French comedy was given on Monday, Tuesday was a day of rest, Russian comedy was played on Wednesday, tragedy or French opera was played on Thursday, followed by an exit masquerade. On Friday, masquerades were given at court, on Saturday they rested.
20 rooms on the third floor of the western part of the Winter Palace in 1773 were given to the educator of the children of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich - Adjutant General Nikolai Ivanovich Saltykov. Since then, the western entrance and stairs of the building have been called Saltykovsky.
On September 29, 1773, the wedding of the future Emperor Paul I with Wilhelmina of Hesse-Darmstadt (in Orthodoxy - Natalya Alekseevna) took place in the Winter Palace. After the wedding, the highest nobility gathered in the Throne Room, where a table was served. This was followed by a ball, which was opened by the newlyweds. However, Natalya's dress turned out to be so heavy because of the precious stones scattered across the sky that she managed to dance only a few minuets. While Natalia was being undressed, Pavel had dinner in the next room with his mother.
In 1776, Grand Duchess Natalya Alekseevna died in the chambers of the Winter Palace during childbirth. Her unborn child died with her.
Due to the expansion of the imperial family, the space of the Palace Theater was divided into parts and given over to the living quarters of the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich and his wife. In the western part of the Winter Palace, the architect Giacomo Quarenghi created rooms for their children.
On May 9, 1793, in the Great Cathedral Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands, the ceremony of anointing Louise Maria Augusta of Baden, who became Elizaveta Petrovna in Orthodoxy, was held. The next day, her betrothal to Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich took place. On September 28, they were married in the same church. The newlyweds settled in the northwestern risalit of the Winter Palace. The interiors for them in 1793 were designed by the architect I. E. Starov. From the side of the Neva, a suite of rooms for Elizaveta Alekseevna appeared. It included: Reception Room, First Living Room, Second Living Room, Bedchamber, Divan or Mirror Room. This enfilade was connected to the Large Dining Room with windows overlooking the courtyard. The windows overlooking the Admiralty were Elizaveta Petrovna's Dressing Room, her Boudoir, the Valet's Room and Alexander Pavlovich's Corner Office. From the side of the Saltykovsky entrance there were the Lavatory of Alexander Pavlovich and the Kamer-Yungferskaya.
In 1791-1793, Quarenghi rebuilt the Neva Enfilade. The place of its five anterooms was occupied by the anteroom, Nikolaevsky and Concert Halls that still exist.
In order to get to the Hermitage, visitors had to pass through the private quarters of Catherine II in the southeastern part of the Winter Palace. So that outsiders would not have to disturb the Empress, by her decree a bridge gallery was created between the palace and the Small Hermitage. Thus the new Throne Room was born. It was opened on the day of St. George the Victorious on November 28, 1795 and named St. George's. Its design was also handled by Quarenghi. On the sides of the throne were two large white marble statues supporting the shield, made by the sculptor Concesio Albani. The hall was illuminated by 28 carved gilded chandeliers, 16 candelabra and 50 bronze girondoles in the form of vases. The creation of the Great Throne Hall cost the treasury 782,556 rubles and 47.5 kopecks. Simultaneously with the Great Throne Hall, the adjacent Apollo Hall was created, through which it became possible to get into the gallery of the Small Hermitage.
The St. George Hall of the Winter Palace was created after the suppression of the Polish uprising, the capture of Warsaw and the third partition of Poland. At the same time, Suvorov brought a trophy to St. Petersburg - the throne of Polish kings. Catherine II ordered to convert it into a toilet seat and place it in the dressing room. On it, Catherine II was caught by an apoplexy that brought her to the grave on November 5, 1796. The coffin with the body of the empress was put up for parting in the bedroom (the third and fourth windows on the right, from the side of Palace Square).
Under Paul I, a memorial study of his father Peter III was created in the Diamond Room. Immediately after his accession to the throne, he ordered the construction of a wooden bell tower for the palace cathedral of the Savior Not Made by Hands, whose dome is clearly visible from Palace Square. The bell tower was built on the roof of the palace, to the west of the cathedral. In addition, the bell tower was built for the small church. At that time, the rooms of the emperor's children were located on the site of the White Hall.
Instead of one Throne Hall, Paul I created two in the Winter Palace - for himself and for Empress Maria Feodorovna. They were located in the southern enfilade from the side of the courtyard. The personal quarters of the emperor were located in the former rooms of Catherine II, his wife was given the rooms of the southern enfilade from the side of Palace Square. Under Paul I, the new ceremonial halls - the Cavalry Guard (now Alexander) and the Throne Rooms of the southern enfilade - were designed and decorated by the architect Vincenzo Brenna. After Paul I accepted the title of Grand Master of the Order of Malta in 1798, two rooms in the southeastern risalit were converted into the Cavalier Hall, where official receptions of the Maltese cavaliers were held, and the Maltese Throne Hall. The place of gilding on their walls was occupied by silver lining against the background of yellow velvet. The southern facade of the Winter Palace was decorated with the coat of arms of the Order of the Grand Master.
On February 1, 1801, Paul I, together with his family, moved to the newly rebuilt Mikhailovsky Castle.
After the death of Paul I, his son Alexander returned the status of the imperial residence to the Winter Palace. The rooms of Alexander I and his wife remained in the northwestern risalit, where they were until the accession to the throne of Alexander Pavlovich. In the very first years of the reign of the new emperor, all these rooms were re-decorated by the architect Luigi Rusca. The bedrooms and latrines of Alexander and Elizabeth began to be located next to each other, whereas previously they were separated by several rooms. In place of the Bedchamber of Elizabeth Alekseevna, her Cabinet-Library appeared, the Bedchamber was moved to the former Lavatory.
The widow of Paul I, Empress Maria Feodorovna, began to own a suite of rooms on the third floor from the side of Palace Square. But, having moved to Pavlovsk, she was here very rarely.
In 1817, Alexander I invited the architect Carl Rossi to work in the Winter Palace. He was entrusted with the alteration of the rooms where the daughter of the Prussian king, Princess Caroline, the bride of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich (the future Nicholas I) would stay. In five months, Rossi remodeled ten rooms located along Palace Square: the Tapestry Room, the Great Dining Room, the Living Room ...
In 1825, the courtyard of the Winter Palace was paved with cobblestones.
The next emperor, Nicholas I, settled in the Winter Palace with his family immediately after receiving the news of the death of his elder brother. He moved here from the Anichkov Palace. The uprising of December 14, 1825, the royal family experienced in the Winter Palace.
Nicholas I chose the rooms on the third floor of the northwestern risalit as his apartments. The rooms of Elizaveta Alekseevna were occupied by his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Part of the premises of the first floor of the northwestern risalit was given to her beloved maid of honor and mentor - Madame Wildemeter. The living quarters of the new emperor and empress were decorated by the architect V.P. Stasov. He kept the layout, but changed the purpose of some rooms. The former Blue Divan of Elizaveta Alekseevna became the Large Study of Alexandra Feodorovna. Nearby are the Bedchamber and Lavatory. From the side of the Neva there were the Reception Room and the First Living Room, the Second Living Room and the Library. The rooms of Alexander I were preserved by Nicholas I as a memorial.
On the third floor, next to the rooms of Nicholas I, Stasov equipped the dwelling of his younger brother Mikhail Pavlovich. The emperor's apartments consisted of a secretary room, a reception room, a corner living room, a green study and a boudoir. The painters F. Toricelli, G. Scotti, B. Medici, F. Brandukov and F. Brullo helped Stasov in the design of these rooms.
Even Alexander I decided to create the Gallery of 1812 in the Winter Palace. He learned about the creation in Windsor Castle of the "Hall of Remembrance of Waterloo" with portraits of Napoleon's victors. But the British won one battle, and the Russians won the whole war and entered Paris. To create a gallery in St. Petersburg, the English artist George Dow was invited, who was given a special room in the palace for work. Young artists Alexander Polyakov and Vasily Golike were given to help him.
Alexander I was in no hurry to open the memorial hall. But Nicholas I, immediately after accession to the throne, hastened to open it. The architectural design of the hall was entrusted to the architect Carl Rossi. To create it, he combined a suite of six rooms into one room. The project he created was approved on May 12, 1826. The gallery of 1812 was opened on December 25, the fourteenth anniversary of the expulsion of the French army from Russia. At the time of opening, 236 portraits of participants in the Patriotic War hung on the walls. Many years later there were 332.
In the first days of January 1827, Nicholas I instructed Karl Rossi to remodel the apartments of Empress Maria Feodorovna in the Winter Palace. The projects were ready by the beginning of March. But due to his own illness, the architect took a six-week vacation. Returning from a well-deserved rest, he learned that the work was transferred to Auguste Montferrand.
On December 25, 1827, the solemn consecration of the Gallery took place, described in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski:
"This gallery was consecrated in the presence of the imperial family and all generals, officers and soldiers who have medals of 1812 and for the capture of Paris. Cavaliers of these foot guards were gathered in the St. George's Hall, and the Horse Guards in the White ... Sovereign Emperor deigned to give directions for storage in the future... the banners of the Life Guards regiments... They are placed in both corners at the main entrance under the inscriptions of memorable places... on which they once fluttered with unfading glory.
... All the lower ranks gathered here were admitted to the gallery, where they passed in front of the images ... of Alexander and the generals - who repeatedly led them on the field of honor and victories, in front of the images of their valiant commanders, who shared labors and dangers with them .. ." [Quoted in: 2, p. 489]
After the opening of the gallery, Carl Rossi designed the premises around it. The architect conceived the Anteroom, Heraldic, Petrovsky and Field Marshal's halls. After 1833, these premises were completed by Auguste Montferrand.
From 1833 to 1845 the Winter Palace was equipped with an optical telegraph. For him, a telegraph tower was equipped on the roof of the building, which is still clearly visible from the Palace Bridge. From here the tsar had connections with Kronstadt, Gatchina, Tsarskoye Selo and even Warsaw. Telegraph workers were housed in the room below it, in the attic.
On the evening of December 17, 1837, a fire broke out in the Winter Palace. They could not extinguish it for three days, all this time the property taken out of the palace was piled around the Alexander Column. It was impossible to see behind every little thing from all the things piled up on Palace Square. Here lay expensive furniture, porcelain, silverware. And despite the lack of adequate security, only a silver coffee pot and a gilded bracelet were missing. Thus, many things were saved. The coffee pot was discovered a few days later, and the bracelet in the spring, when the snow melted. The building of the palace suffered so much that it was then considered almost impossible to restore it. Only stone walls and arches of the first floor remained from it.
When saving property, 13 soldiers and firefighters were killed.
On December 25, the Commission for the Restoration of the Winter Palace was established. The restoration of the facades and the decoration of the front interiors were entrusted to the architect V.P. Stasov. The personal chambers of the imperial family were entrusted to A.P. Bryullov. General supervision of the construction was carried out by A. Staubert.
The Frenchman A. de Custine wrote:
“Incredible, superhuman efforts were needed to complete the construction at the time appointed by the emperor. Work continued on the interior decoration in the most severe frosts. In total, there were six thousand workers at the construction site, of whom many died daily, but others were immediately brought in to replace these unfortunate ones, who in their turn were destined to soon perish, and the sole purpose of these countless sacrifices was to fulfill the royal whim...
In severe frosts of 25-30 degrees, six thousand unknown martyrs, unrewarded in any way, forced against their will by mere obedience, which is an innate, violently instilled virtue of Russians, were locked in the palace halls, where the temperature, due to the increased firebox for speedy drying, reached 30 degrees heat. . And the unfortunate, entering and leaving this palace of death, which, thanks to their sacrifices, was to turn into a palace of vanity, splendor and pleasure, experienced a temperature difference of 50-60 degrees.
Work in the mines of the Urals was much less dangerous to human life, and yet the workers employed in the construction of the palace were not criminals, like those who were sent to the mines. I was told that the unfortunates who worked in the most heated halls had to put some kind of caps with ice on their heads in order to be able to withstand this monstrous heat without losing consciousness and the ability to continue their work ... "[Quoted by: 2, p. 554]
For a long time it was believed that after the fire, the facades of the Winter Palace were recreated exactly the same as they were conceived by Rastrelli. But in the article "Why Rastrelli was corrected," the historian Z. F. Semenova described in detail the changes made and pointed out their reasons. It turned out that the northern façade of the building had been largely altered. Semicircular pediments were replaced by triangular ones, and the rendering of moldings changed. The number of columns has increased, which are evenly spaced in each wall. Such rhythm and orderliness of the columns is not characteristic of the baroque style of Rastrelli.
Particularly indicative are the changes in the design of the Jordanian entrance. Here, the absence of the bending of the entablature is clearly visible, which is replaced by supporting beams of load-bearing columns. In his practice, Rastrelli never used such a technique.
The "corrections" of the style of the author of the Winter Palace are connected, first of all, with a different understanding of the architecture of Russian architects in the middle of the 19th century. They perceived the baroque as a bad form, diligently correcting it into the correct classical forms.
The wooden bell towers built under Paul I were not recreated.
The decoration of the interiors of the Winter Palace after the fire was very characteristic of the late 1830s, when classicism gave way to eclecticism. The main front interiors have retained their former style solutions. So, Nicholas I ordered the front (Jordanian) stairs " restart in the old way", but at the same time" replace the top columns with marble or granite". Ready-made columns of polished dark Serdobol granite were found in the storerooms of the Winter Palace - they decorated the Jordan Stairs. The floor and steps were recreated from white Carrara marble, and a balustrade was made from it. In place of the small halls adjoining the Neva enfilade, Stasov created narrow galleries-corridors, and in the central part - the Winter Garden with an area of about 140 square meters with a glazed ceiling.
The 1812 gallery by Stasov was recreated with changes. He increased its length, removed the arch dividing the room into three parts.
The same volumes of the building, which housed the private quarters of the imperial family, were radically redesigned. The architect A.P. Bryullov carried out their redevelopment, significantly improving the functioning of the Winter Palace as apartments for the tsar and his large family. The interiors created by Bryullov received various style solutions. The architect used the techniques of Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Greek, Pompeian Moorish styles, Gothic.
The layout of the building, created at that time, was kept almost unchanged until 1917.
The celebration on the occasion of the restoration of the Winter Palace took place in March 1839. A. de Custine visited the restored Winter Palace:
"It was an extravaganza ... The brilliance of the main gallery in the Winter Palace positively blinded me. It is all covered with gold, while before the fire it was painted white ... Even more worthy of surprise than the sparkling golden dance hall, the gallery seemed to me where dinner was served. [Cit. according to: 3, p. 36]
The statues on the roof of the Winter Palace cracked and began to crumble due to the fire. In 1840 they were restored under the guidance of the sculptor V. Demut-Malinovsky.
On the ground floor, along the entire eastern gallery, mezzanines were built, separated by brick walls. The corridor formed between them became known as the kitchen corridor.
The gates that closed the entrance to the courtyard were also restored. They exactly repeated the appearance of the gate created by Felten.
Catherine's rooms under Nicholas I began to be called "Prussian-royal". The son-in-law of the emperor, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, used to stop here. After the fire, the former rooms of Maria Feodorovna became the Russian Department of the Hermitage, and after the construction of the New Hermitage building - a hotel for high-ranking persons. They were called "The Second Spare Half".
In general, "halves" in the Winter Palace called the system of rooms for one person to live. Usually these rooms were grouped on the same floor around the stairs. For example, the apartments of the emperor were on the third floor, and the empress on the second. They were connected by a common staircase. The room system included everything needed for a luxurious life. So, half of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna included the Malachite, Pink and Raspberry living rooms, the Arapskaya, Pompeii and Large dining rooms, an office, a bedroom, a boudoir, a garden, a bathroom and a pantry, a Diamond and a Passage room. The first six rooms were ceremonial rooms in which the Empress received guests.
In addition to the half of Nicholas I and his wife, the Winter Palace had half of the heir, the Grand Dukes, Grand Duchesses, the Minister of the Court, the first and second spares for the temporary stay of the highest persons and members of the imperial family. As the number of members of the Romanov family increased, the number of spare halves also increased. At the beginning of the 20th century there were seven of them.
The Alexander Hall occupies the central part of the second floor of the façade of the Winter Palace from the side of Palace Square. To his left is the White Hall, recreated by the architect Bryullov on the site of the rooms of the children of Paul I. After the marriage of the heir to the throne (the future Alexander II) with Princess Maximilian Wilhelmina Augusta Sophia Maria of Hesse-Darmstadt (called Maria Alexandrovna in Orthodoxy) in 1841, he became part of her apartments. Maria Alexandrovna owned seven more rooms, including the Golden Living Room, whose windows overlooked Palace Square and the Admiralty. The White Hall was used for receptions. Here they laid tables and arranged dances.
Having ascended the throne in 1856, Alexander II left behind the rooms in which he lived with his wife after the marriage. The interiors for the imperial couple were restored by the architects A.P. Bryullov, A.I. Stackenschneider, G.E. Bosse. In the northwestern risalit, an apartment was created for the younger brother of Alexander II, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. Before his marriage to Princess Alexandra Frederica Wilhelmina of Oldenburg (who became Alexandra Petrovna in Russia), the architect Andrey Ivanovich Stackenschneider was in charge of decorating the apartments. These works were carried out around the clock, up to 200 people participated in them.
The apartments of Alexander II consisted of the Entrance Hall, the Hall, the Study Room (on February 19, 1861, the Manifesto on the abolition of serfdom was signed in it), the Study-bedroom, the Room for orderlies and the Library.
In the 1860s, the entrance gate was badly dilapidated. They decided to replace them, the architect Andrey Ivanovich Shtakenshneider proposed a project of cast-iron gates. But this project was not carried out.
In 1869, instead of candlelight, gas lighting appeared in the palace.
The Winter Palace became the site of an attempt on the life of Emperor Alexander II. The terrorist Stepan Nikolaevich Khalturin planned to blow up the tsar when he was having breakfast in the Yellow Living Room. To do this, Khalturin got a job as a carpenter in the palace, settled in a small room with a carpenter. This room was located in the basement, above which the guardhouse of the palace guard was located. Above the guardhouse was the Yellow Drawing Room. Khalturin planned to blow it up with the help of dynamite, which he carried in parts to his room. According to his calculations, the force of the explosion should have been enough to destroy the ceilings of two floors and kill the emperor. The explosive device was set off on February 5, 1880, at 20 minutes past seven in the morning. The royal family was delayed, by the time of the explosion they did not even have time to reach the Yellow Room. But the Life Guards of the Finnish Regiment, who were in the guardhouse, suffered. 11 people were killed, 47 were injured.
Since 1882, the installation of telephones in the premises began. In the 1880s, a water supply system was built here (before that, everyone used washstands). At Christmas 1884-1885, electric lighting was tested in the halls of the Winter Palace; from 1888, gas lighting was gradually replaced by electric lighting. For this, a power plant was built in the second hall of the Hermitage, which for 15 years was the largest in Europe.
After the death of Alexander II in 1881, the attitude of the royal family towards the Winter Palace changed. Before this tragedy, he was perceived by the emperors as a home, as a place where it was safe. But Alexander III treated the Winter Palace differently. Here he saw his mortally wounded father. The emperor also remembered the explosion of 1880, which means he did not feel safe here. In addition, the huge Winter Palace no longer met the requirements for comfortable housing at the end of the 19th century. Gradually, the imperial residence became only a place for official receptions, while the royal family more often spent time in other places, in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.
Alexander III made the Anichkov Palace his official residence in St. Petersburg. The ceremonial halls of the Winter Palace were open to them for excursions, which were arranged for high school students and students. Balls under Alexander III were not held here. This tradition was resumed by Nicholas II, but the rules for holding them were changed.
In 1884, architect Nikolai Gornostaev began designing the new gates of the Winter Palace. He adopted the Stackenschneider project as a basis. He developed projects for both the entrance gate and the fence for the ramps leading to the Commandant, Her Imperial Majesty and His Imperial Majesty, Front (in the courtyard) entrances. One of the projects was approved, but the owner of the furniture company, artist Roman Meltzer, got to carry it out. This was his first major work. Meltzer somewhat altered Gornostaev's project, and at the same time presented to the highest persons not only drawings, but also a life-size wooden model. After their approval, the gates and fences were made at the San Galli iron foundry.
In the late 1880s, the architect Gornostaev landscaped the inner courtyard of the Winter Palace. A garden was laid out in its central part, where oaks, lindens, maples and white American ash were planted. The garden was surrounded by a granite plinth, a fountain was arranged in its center.
Once, a fragment of one of the figures on the roof of the Winter Palace fell in front of the windows of the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Nicholas II. The statues were removed, and in the 1890s they were replaced by copper figures under the models of the sculptor N.P. Popov. Of the 102 original figures, only 27 were recreated by copying them three times. All vases have been replicated from one single model. In 1910, the remains of the original sculptures were found during the construction of a residential building at the corner of Zagorodny Prospekt and Bolshoy Kazachy Lane. The heads of the statues are now kept in the Russian Museum.
On November 14, 1894, the wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna took place in the Court Cathedral of the Savior Not Made by Hands, seven days after the funeral of Alexander III. A week after the wedding, the new emperor decided to once again make the Winter Palace the permanent residence of the Russian tsar. The private quarters of the imperial couple were created in the former rooms of Nicholas I and his wife - on the second floor of the northwestern risalit, with the exception of the Arap dining room, the Rotunda and the Malachite living room. Projects of new interiors were developed by academicians of architecture M. E. Mesmacher, D. A. Kryzhanovsky and A. F. Krasovsky. Carpentry and art work was carried out by the furniture and parquet factories of F. F. Meltzer and N. F. Svirsky. The decoration of the rooms was completed in November 1895. For Nicholas II were created: Adjutant Room, Billiard Room, Library, walk-through room, Bathroom with pool, Cabinet and Lavatory. For Alexandra Feodorovna: Small Dining Room, Malachite Living Room, First and Second Living Rooms, Corner Study and Bedroom. For the first time in the Winter Palace, elements of the Art Nouveau style were used in the rooms of Nicholas II. The transfer of the imperial family from the Alexander Palace to the Winter Palace took place on December 30, 1895.
The working day of Nicholas II was held in the office. Here he received visitors, listened to reports and signed documents. He did not have a secretary, because he did not want an outsider to influence the course of his thoughts. The Emperor spent the evening hours in the Library with the Empress. This is one of the few rooms that have preserved the interiors to this day. Its decoration was carried out by the architect Alexander Fedorovich Krasovsky. Here, by the burning fireplace, the couple talked, read to each other aloud.
In January, one big and two or three small balls were held in the Winter Palace. Up to 5,000 people were invited to the big ball, the congress was scheduled for 9 pm, the event ended at about 2 am. 800 - 1,000 people took part in small balls.
On July 30, 1904, the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich, was born. It soon became clear that he inherited from his ancestors an incurable disease - hemophilia. After the diagnosis was made, the imperial family decided to move back to the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoye Selo in order to hide their grief from prying eyes. The Winter Palace remained a place for ceremonial receptions, ceremonial dinners, and the seat of the king during short visits to the city. Balls were no longer held here.
One of the last celebrations held in the Winter Palace under Nicholas II was the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. Festive events were held from 19 to 25 February 1913.
During the First World War (October 5, 1915), the building was given over to the infirmary, named after the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich. An operating room, therapeutic, examination and other services were opened in the Winter Palace. The armorial hall became a ward for the wounded. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, the eldest daughters of the tsar, court ladies looked after them.
In the summer of 1917, the Winter Palace became the meeting place of the Provisional Government, which until then had been housed in the Mariinsky Palace. In July, Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky became chairman of the Provisional Government. It was located in the chambers of Alexander III - in the northwestern part of the palace, on the third floor, with windows overlooking the Admiralty and the Neva. The provisional government was located in the chambers of Nicholas II and his wife - on the second floor, under the apartments of Alexander III. The Malachite Living Room became the meeting room.
The jewels stored in the Winter Palace were looted even before the October Revolution. This was facilitated by the work here of the hospital, various public organizations, the deployment of military units guarding the Provisional Government. Door decorations, a significant part of the candelabra were stolen, marble statues in the White Hall were damaged, furniture was damaged, portraits were torn by bayonets. In this regard, it was decided to transfer most of the valuables from the Winter Palace to Moscow. At the same time, on August 25, 1917, preparations began for the evacuation of the Hermitage collections to Moscow.
Before the First World War, the Winter Palace was repainted in red-brick color. It was against this background that the revolutionary events took place on Palace Square in 1917. On the morning of October 25, Kerensky left the Winter Palace to join the troops stationed outside Petrograd. On the night of October 25-26, a detachment of sailors and Red Army soldiers entered the building through the entrance of Her Imperial Majesty. On October 26, 1917, at 1:50 a.m., the ministers of the Provisional Government were arrested in the Winter Palace. Subsequently, this entrance to the palace, as well as the staircase behind it, was called October.
Winter Palace after 1917, State Hermitage Museum
On the night of October 25-26, 1917, many rooms of the Winter Palace were devastated. With particular frenzy, the pogromists smashed the private quarters of Nicholas II. On October 27, by decision of the newly created Council of People's Commissars, the hospital was closed in the Winter Palace.
Before the Bolshevik revolution, the basement floor of the Winter Palace was occupied by a wine cellar. Centenary cognacs, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and other wines were stored here. According to the city duma, one fifth of the entire supply of alcohol in St. Petersburg was stored in the basements of the Winter Palace. On November 3, 1917, when wine pogroms began in the city, the storehouses of the former royal residence were also damaged. From the memoirs of Larisa Reisner about the events in the cellars of the Winter Palace:
“They were heaped with firewood, walled up first in one brick, then in two bricks - nothing helps. Every night they make a hole somewhere and suck, lick, pull out what they can. Some crazy, naked, impudent voluptuousness attracts to the forbidden wall With tears in his eyes, Sergeant Major Krivoruchenko, who was assigned to protect the unfortunate barrels, told me about the despair, about the complete impotence that he experienced at night, defending alone, sober, with his few guards against the persistent, all-pervading lust of the crowd. Now we have decided this: a machine gun will be inserted into each new hole.
But that didn't help either. In the end, it was decided to destroy the wine on the spot:
"...They called firefighters then. They turned on the cars, pumped full cellars of water and let's pump everything into the Neva. Muddy streams flowed from Zimny: there is wine, and water, and dirt - everything was mixed up ... This story dragged on for a day or two until there was nothing left of the wine cellars in Zimny".
Against the backdrop of widespread renaming of streets, squares, former royal and princely residences, a new name appeared at the Winter Palace, which became the Palace of Arts.
In 1922, the "Museum of the Revolution" was organized in the Winter Palace. Under it, three floors of the western half of the building were assigned, including the Nikolaevsky and Concert halls, the Anteroom and 27 rooms with partially preserved pre-revolutionary decoration. The created exposition was called "The Historical Rooms of the Emperors Alexander II and Nicholas II". Other state rooms of the Winter Palace were transferred to the Hermitage. V. V. Shulgin, who visited the Museum of the Revolution in 1925, wrote:
“We entered the Winter Palace. It was cold, uncomfortable, not heated below. We took tickets to the Museum of the Revolution. We climbed some, apparently service stairs and entered the hall, where, freezing in boots and felt boots, some "women-watchdogs". More and more photography. February days, February newspapers, all kinds of members of the Duma, Rodzianko, Kerensky. All this is collected conscientiously, but boring ...
... the rooms, indicating the modest private life of the sovereigns and especially the empresses, produced some sensation among the handful of people around us. Wasn't expecting it...
There are no particularly valuable things in the chambers of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna: all these are intimate things that were of value only to themselves. The pens and pens that Nicholas II wrote with have been preserved here; this is Alexandra Feodorovna's writing-book. This is a collection of Easter eggs that they received as a gift...
As we passed the swimming pool, the only luxury that the late Sovereign seemed to allow himself, my companion showed me a spiral staircase that ran up, and remarked in my ear: “There is a room where that scoundrel, Sashka Kerensky, lived "" [Cited in: 6, pp. 245, 246].
In addition to the Museum of the Revolution, the premises of the Winter Palace were occupied, replacing each other, by a variety of institutions: the bodies of the Congress of the Committees of the Poor Peasants of the Northern Region and the Congress of Workers of the Northern Region. The former maid of honor rooms were occupied by the hostel of preschool colonies. Thus, on the third floor there was a colony of homeless children. The headquarters of the October and May Day celebrations worked on the second floor. In some ceremonial halls (including the Georgievsky) exhibitions were held by the Department of Public Education of the People's Commissariat of Education, in the Armorial Hall - concerts and performances, in the Nikolaev Hall for some time a cinema was equipped, and later party meetings and rallies of the Central City District of Petrograd began to be held. The former chief marshal's premises were occupied by a club and a children's dining room. The stables and adjacent utility rooms began to serve as warehouses for children's colonies for homeless children, both the one in the Winter Palace and those located in the Tsarskoye Selo palaces.
A huge number of people who wanted to get acquainted with the former private chambers of the royal family and their completely different reaction to what they saw than what the authorities expected, led to the closure of the Museum of the Revolution. On August 1, 1926, the private rooms of Alexander II and Nicholas II were transferred to the Hermitage.
The Winter Palace has been rebuilt for the needs of the museum since 1927, and especially actively in the early 1930s. Then the bay windows above the entrances from the side of the Palace Square were dismantled. In 1927, during the restoration of the facade, 13 layers of different paints were discovered. Then the walls of the Winter Palace were repainted gray-green, the columns white, and the stucco molding almost black. At the same time, the mezzanines and partitions of the eastern gallery of the first floor were dismantled. It was called the Rastrelli Gallery.
On August 31, 1932, the Lenin Komsomol Museum was opened in the Winter Palace, the entrance to which was through the Oktyabrsky entrance from the side of Palace Square. By 1938, almost all the premises were transferred for museum purposes.
During the siege, in the spring of 1942, a vegetable garden was set up in the courtyard garden of the Winter Palace. Potatoes, turnips, and beets were planted here. The same garden was in the Hanging Garden.
The last historical rooms of the imperial residence, which retained their furnishings, were converted for museum purposes in 1946. In 1955, P. Ya. Kann provided the following information about the palace: there were 1050 front and living rooms, 1945 windows, 1786 doors, 117 stairs.
At present, the Winter Palace, together with the Hermitage Theatre, the Small, New and Large Hermitages, constitutes a single State Hermitage complex. Its basement floor is occupied by production museum workshops.
The Winter Palace is the largest palace building in St. Petersburg. Its dimensions and magnificent decoration make it possible to classify it with full right among the most striking monuments of the St. Petersburg baroque. “The Winter Palace as a building, as a royal dwelling, perhaps has nothing like it in the whole of Europe. With its immensity, its architecture, it depicts a powerful people, so recently entered the environment of educated nations, and with its inner splendor it reminds of that inexhaustible life that boils in the interior of Russia ... The Winter Palace for us is a representative of everything domestic, Russian, ours, ” - this is how V. A. Zhukovsky wrote about the Winter Palace. The history of this architectural monument is rich in turbulent historical events.
At the beginning of the 18th century, in the place where the Winter Palace now stands, only naval officials were allowed to build. Peter I took advantage of this right, being a ship's master under the name of Peter Alekseev, and in 1708 he built a small house in the Dutch style for himself and his family. Ten years later, by order of the future emperor, a canal was dug in front of the side facade of the palace, called (after the palace) the Winter Canal.
In 1711, specifically for the wedding of Peter I and Catherine, the architect Georg Mattarnovi, by order of the tsar, set about rebuilding the wooden palace into a stone one. In the course of work, the architect Mattarnovi was removed from business and the construction was headed by Domenico Trezzini, an Italian architect of Swiss origin. In 1720, Peter I and his entire family moved from their summer residence to their winter residence. In 1723, the Senate was transferred to the Winter Palace. And in January 1725, Peter I died here (in the room on the first floor behind the current second window, counting from the Neva).
Subsequently, Empress Anna Ioannovna considered the Winter Palace too small and in 1731 entrusted its reconstruction to F. B. Rastrelli, who offered her his project for the reconstruction of the Winter Palace. According to his project, it was necessary to purchase the houses that stood at that time on the site occupied by the current palace and belonged to Count Apraksin, the Naval Academy, Raguzinsky and Chernyshev. Anna Ioanovna approved the project, the houses were bought up, demolished, and the work began to boil. In 1735, the construction of the palace was completed, and the empress moved into it to live. Here, on July 2, 1739, Princess Anna Leopoldovna was betrothed to Prince Anton-Urich. After the death of Anna Ioannovna, the young emperor John Antonovich was brought here, who stayed here until November 25, 1741, when Elizaveta Petrovna took power into her own hands.
Elizaveta Petrovna also wished to remake the imperial residence to her taste. On January 1, 1752, she decided to expand the Winter Palace, after which the neighboring plots of Raguzinsky and Yaguzhinsky were bought out. At the new location, Rastrelli built new buildings. According to the project he drew up, these buildings were to be attached to the existing ones and be decorated with them in the same style. In December 1752, the Empress wished to increase the height of the Winter Palace from 14 to 22 meters. Rastrelli was forced to redo the design of the building, after which he decided to build it in a new location. But Elizaveta Petrovna refused to move the new Winter Palace. As a result, the architect decided to rebuild the entire building. The new project - the next building of the Winter Palace - was signed by Elizaveta Petrovna on June 16, 1754.
Construction lasted eight long years, which fell on the decline of the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna and the short reign of Peter III.
The story of the arrival at the palace of Peter III is curious. After the death of Elizabeth, 15 thousand dresses, many thousands of shoes and stockings remained in her wardrobe, and only six silver rubles turned out to be in the state treasury. Peter III, who replaced Elizabeth on the throne, wished to immediately move into his new residence. But the Palace Square was cluttered with piles of bricks, boards, logs, barrels of lime and similar building debris. The capricious disposition of the new sovereign was known, and the chief police chief found a way out: it was announced in St. Petersburg that all the townsfolk have the right to take whatever they please on Palace Square. A contemporary (A. Bolotov) writes in his memoirs that almost all of St. Petersburg with wheelbarrows, wagons, and some with sledges (despite the proximity of Easter!) ran to Palace Square. Clouds of sand and dust rose above her. The townsfolk grabbed everything: boards, bricks, clay, lime, and barrels... By evening, the area was completely cleared. Nothing interfered with the solemn entry of Peter III into the Winter Palace.
In the summer of 1762, Peter III was overthrown from the throne. The construction of the Winter Palace was already completed under Catherine II. In the autumn of 1763, the empress returned from Moscow to St. Petersburg after the coronation celebrations and became the sovereign mistress of the new palace.
First of all, Catherine removed Rastrelli from work, and Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy, the illegitimate son of Field Marshal Prince Ivan Yuryevich Trubetskoy and personal secretary of Catherine II, became the manager at the construction site. The empress moved the chambers to the southwestern part of the palace, under her rooms she ordered to place the chambers of her favorite G. G. Orlov.
From the side of the Palace Square, the Throne Hall was equipped, in front of it a waiting room appeared - the White Hall. A dining room was placed behind the White Hall. The Light Room adjoined it. The dining room was followed by the Front Bedchamber, which a year later became the Diamond Chamber. In addition, the Empress ordered to equip a library, an office, a boudoir, two bedrooms and a lavatory for herself. Under Catherine, a winter garden and the Romanov Gallery were also built in the Winter Palace. At the same time, the formation of St. George's Hall was completed. In 1764, in Berlin, through agents, Catherine purchased a collection of 225 works by Dutch and Flemish artists from the merchant I. Gotskovsky. Most of the paintings were placed in secluded apartments of the palace, which received the French name "Hermitage" ("place of solitude").
Built by Elizabeth, the fourth, now existing palace was conceived and implemented in the form of a closed quadrangle with a vast courtyard. Its facades face the Neva, towards the Admiralty and the square, in the center of which F. B. Rastrelli planned to place an equestrian statue of Peter I.
The facades of the palace are divided by the entablature into two tiers. They are decorated with Ionic and Composite columns. The columns of the upper tier unite the second, front, and third floors.
The complex rhythm of the columns, the richness and variety of forms of architraves, the abundance of stucco details, the many decorative vases and statues located above the parapet and above the numerous pediments create the decorative decoration of the building, exceptional in its splendor and magnificence.
The southern facade is cut through by three entrance arches, which emphasizes its importance as the main one. The entrance arches lead to the main courtyard, where the main entrance to the palace was located in the center of the northern building.
The main Jordan Staircase is located in the northeast corner of the building. On the second floor along the northern facade there were five large halls, the so-called "anti-chambers", enfilade, behind them - a huge Throne Hall, and in the southwestern part - the palace theater.
Despite the fact that the Winter Palace was completed in 1762, for a long time, work was still being done on the interior decoration. These works were entrusted to the best Russian architects Yu. M. Felten, J. B. Ballin-Delamot and A. Rinaldi.
In the 1780s-1790s, I.E. Starov and G. Quarenghi continued the work on altering the interior decoration of the palace. In general, the palace was remodeled and rebuilt an incredible number of times. Each new architect tried to bring something of his own, sometimes destroying what had already been built.
Galleries with arches ran along the entire lower floor. Galleries connected all parts of the palace. The rooms on the sides of the galleries were of a service nature. There were pantries, a guardroom, employees of the palace lived.
The ceremonial halls and living quarters of members of the imperial family were located on the second floor and were built in the Russian Baroque style - huge halls flooded with light, double rows of large windows and mirrors, lush rococo decor. The apartments of the courtiers were mainly located on the upper floor.
The palace was also destroyed. For example, on December 17-19, 1837, there was a strong fire that completely destroyed the beautiful decoration of the Winter Palace, from which only a charred skeleton remained. They could not extinguish the flame for three days, all this time the property taken out of the palace was piled around the Alexander Column. As a result of the disaster, the interiors of Rastrelli, Quarenghi, Montferrand, Rossi were lost. Restoration work started immediately and lasted two years. They were led by architects V.P. Stasov and A.P. Bryullov. According to the order of Nicholas I, the palace was to be restored the same as it was before the fire. However, not everything was so easy to do, for example, only some interiors, created or restored after the fire of 1837 by A.P. Bryullov, have come down to us in their original form.
On February 5, 1880, S. N. Khalturin, a Narodnaya Volya member, made an explosion in the Winter Palace in order to assassinate Alexander II. At the same time, eight soldiers from the guard were killed and forty-five wounded, but neither the emperor nor members of his family were injured.
At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, the interior design was constantly changing and replenished with new elements. Such, in particular, are the interiors of the chambers of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Alexander II, created according to the designs of G. A. Bosse (Red Boudoir) and V. A. Schreiber (Golden Living Room), as well as the library of Nicholas II (author A. F. Krasovsky). Among the renovated interiors, the most interesting was the decoration of the Nicholas Hall, which contained a large equestrian portrait of Emperor Nicholas I by the artist F. Kruger.
For a long time the Winter Palace was the residence of Russian emperors. After the assassination of Alexander II by terrorists, Emperor Alexander III moved his residence to Gatchina. From that moment on, only especially solemn ceremonies were held in the Winter Palace. With the accession to the throne of Nicholas II in 1894, the imperial family returned to the palace again.
The most significant changes in the history of the Winter Palace took place in 1917, along with the coming of the Bolsheviks to power. A lot of valuables were stolen and damaged by sailors and workers while the palace was under their control. A direct hit by a shell fired from a cannon of the Peter and Paul Fortress damaged the former quarters of Alexander III. Only a few days later, the Soviet government declared the Winter Palace and the Hermitage to be state museums and took the buildings under protection. Soon the valuable property of the palace and the collections of the Hermitage were sent to Moscow and hidden in the Kremlin and in the building of the Historical Museum.
An interesting story is connected with the October Revolution in the Winter Palace: after the storming of the palace, the Red Guard, who was instructed to set up guards to guard the Winter Palace, decided to get acquainted with the arrangement of guards in pre-revolutionary times. He was surprised to learn that one of the posts had long been located on an unremarkable alley of the palace garden (the royal family called it "Own" and under this name the garden was known to Petersburgers). An inquisitive Red Guard figured out the history of this post. It turned out that somehow Tsarina Catherine II, having gone out in the morning to the Adjustable platform, saw a sprouted flower there. So that soldiers and passersby would not trample it, Catherine, returning from a walk, ordered a guard to be placed at the flower. And when the flower withered, the queen forgot to cancel her order about the stay of the guard at this place. And since then, for about a hundred and fifty years, a guard stood at this place, although there was no longer a flower, no Empress Catherine, or even a Adjustable platform.
In 1918, part of the premises of the Winter Palace was given over to the Museum of the Revolution, which led to the reorganization of their interiors. The Romanov Gallery was completely liquidated, in which there were portraits of sovereigns and members of the Romanov dynasty. Many chambers of the palace were occupied by a reception center for prisoners of war, a children's colony, a headquarters for arranging mass celebrations, etc. The armorial hall was used for theatrical performances, the Nikolaevsky hall was converted into a cinema. In addition, congresses and conferences of various public organizations were repeatedly held in the halls of the palace.
When the Hermitage and Palace collections returned from Moscow to Petrograd at the end of 1920, there was simply no place for many of them. As a result, hundreds of paintings and sculptures were used to decorate the mansions and apartments of party, Soviet and military leaders, holiday homes for officials and their families. Since 1922, the premises of the Winter Palace began to be gradually transferred to the Hermitage.
In the first days of the Great Patriotic War, many valuables of the Hermitage were urgently evacuated, some of them were hidden in the cellars. To prevent fires in the museum buildings, the windows were bricked up or closed with shutters. In some rooms, the parquets were covered with a layer of sand.
The Winter Palace was a big target. A large number of bombs and shells exploded near him, and several hit the building itself. So, on December 29, 1941, a shell crashed into the southern wing of the Winter Palace overlooking the kitchen yard, damaging the iron rafters and the roof over an area of three hundred square meters, destroying the fire-fighting water supply installation located in the attic. The attic vaulted ceiling with an area of about six square meters was broken through. Another shell that hit the podium in front of the Winter Palace damaged the water main.
Despite the difficult conditions that existed in the besieged city, on May 4, 1942, the Leningrad City Executive Committee ordered construction trust No. 16 to carry out priority restoration work in the Hermitage, in which emergency repair workshops took part. In the summer of 1942, the roof was blocked in places where it was damaged by shells, the formwork was partially repaired, broken skylights or iron sheets were installed, the destroyed metal rafters were replaced with temporary wooden ones, and the plumbing system was repaired.
On May 12, 1943, a bomb hit the building of the Winter Palace, partially destroying the roof over the St. George Hall and metal truss structures, and damaging the brickwork of the wall in the pantry of the Department of the History of Russian Culture. In the summer of 1943, despite the shelling, they continued to seal the roof and ceilings with tarred plywood, skylights. On January 2, 1944, another shell hit the Armorial Hall, severely damaging the finish and destroying two ceilings. The shell also pierced the ceiling of the Nicholas Hall. But already in August 1944, the Soviet government decided to restore all the buildings of the museum. Restoration work required huge efforts and stretched out for many years. But, despite all the losses, the Winter Palace remains an outstanding monument of baroque architecture.
Today, the Winter Palace, together with the buildings of the Small, Large and New Hermitages and the Hermitage Theater, forms a single palace complex, which has few equals in world architecture. In terms of art and town planning, it belongs to the highest achievements of Russian architecture. All the halls of this palace ensemble, built over many years, are occupied by the State Hermitage, the largest museum in the world, which has huge collections of works of art.
In the guise of the Winter Palace, which was created, as the decree on its construction, "for the united glory of all Russia", in its elegant, festive form, in the magnificent decoration of its facades, the artistic and compositional concept of the architect Rastrelli is revealed - a deep architectural connection with the city on the Neva, which became the capital of the Russian Empire, with all the character of the surrounding urban landscape, preserved to this day.
Palace Square
Any tour of the Winter Palace begins on Palace Square. It has its own history, which is no less interesting than the history of the Winter Palace itself. The square was formed in 1754 during the construction of the Winter Palace designed by V. Rastrelli. An important role in its formation was played by K. I. Rossi, who in 1819-1829 created the General Staff building and the Ministry building and connected them into a single whole with a magnificent Arc de Triomphe. The Alexander Column took its place in the Palace Square ensemble in 1830-1834, in honor of the victory in the War of 1812. It is noteworthy that V. Rastrelli intended to place a monument to Peter I in the center of the square. The building of the Headquarters of the Guards Corps, created in 1837-1843 by architect A.P. Bryullov, completes the Palace Square ensemble.
The palace was conceived and built in the form of a closed quadrangle, with a vast courtyard. The Winter Palace is rather large and clearly stands out from the surrounding houses.
Countless white columns now gather in groups (especially picturesque and expressive at the corners of the building), then thin out and part, opening windows framed with platbands with lion masks and cupids' heads. There are dozens of decorative vases and statues on the balustrade. The corners of the building are lined with columns and pilasters.
Each facade of the Winter Palace is made in its own way. The northern façade, facing the Neva, stretches like a more or less even wall, without noticeable ledges. The southern façade, overlooking the Palace Square and having seven articulations, is the main one. Its center is cut by three entrance arches. Behind them is the front yard? where in the middle of the northern building used to be the main entrance to the palace. Of the side facades, the western one is more interesting, facing the Admiralty and the square, on which Rastrelli planned to place the equestrian statue of Peter I cast by his father. Each architraves decorating the palace is unique. This is due to the fact that the mass, consisting of a mixture of crushed bricks and lime mortar, was cut and processed by hand. All stucco decorations of the facades were made on the spot.
The Winter Palace was always painted in bright colors. The original color of the palace was pink-yellow, as evidenced by the drawings of the 18th - the first quarter of the 19th century.
From the interior of the palace, created by Rastrelli, the Jordan Staircase and partly the Great Church have preserved the baroque appearance. The front staircase is located in the northeast corner of the building. On it you can see various details of the decor - columns, mirrors, statues, intricate gilded stucco, a huge ceiling created by Italian painters. Divided into two solemn marches, the stairs led to the main, Northern enfilade, which consisted of five large halls, behind which there was a huge Throne Hall in the northwestern risalit, and the Palace Theater in the southwestern part.
The Great Church, located in the southeast corner of the building, also deserves special attention. Initially, the church was consecrated in honor of the Resurrection of Christ (1762) and again - in the name of the Savior Not Made by Hands (1763). Its walls are decorated with stucco - an elegant pattern of floral ornament. The three-tiered iconostasis is decorated with icons and picturesque panels depicting biblical scenes. Evangelists on the vaults of the ceiling were later painted by F.A. Bruni. Now nothing reminds of the former purpose of the church hall, ruined in the 1920s, except for the golden dome and the large pictorial ceiling by F. Fonte-basso, depicting the Resurrection of Christ.
white hall
It was created by A.P. Bryullov on the site of a number of rooms that had three semicircular windows along the facade in the center, and three rectangular windows on the sides. This circumstance led the architect to the idea of dividing the room into three compartments and highlighting the middle one with especially magnificent processing. The hall is separated from the side parts by arches on protruding pylons, decorated with pilasters, and the central window and the opposite door are emphasized by Corinthian columns, above which are placed four statues - female figures, personifying the arts. The hall is covered with semicircular vaults. The wall against the central windows is designed with an arcade and above each semicircle there are pairwise bas-relief figures of Juno and Jupiter, Diana and Apollo, Ceres and Mercury and other deities of Olympus.
The vault and all parts of the ceiling above the cornice are finished with stuccoed caissons in the same late classical style rich in decorative elements.
The side compartments are decorated in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. Here, under the common crowning cornice, a second smaller order with Tuscan pilasters, covered with small molding with a grotesque ornament, is introduced. Above the pilasters there is a wide frieze with figures of children engaged in music and dancing, hunting and fishing, harvesting and winemaking, or playing seafaring and war. Such a combination of architectural elements of different scales and overloading the hall with ornaments are typical of the classicism of the 1830s, but the white color gives the hall integrity.
Georgievsky Hall and Military Gallery
Experts call the Georgievsky, or the Great Throne Room, designed by Quarenghi, the most perfect interior. In order to create the St. George Hall, a special building had to be attached to the center of the eastern facade of the palace. In the design of this room, which enriched the front suite, colored marble and gilded bronze were used. At the end of it, on a dais, there used to be a large throne, made by the master P. Azhi. Other well-known architects also participated in the design of palace interiors. In 1826, according to the project of K. I. Rossi, the Military Gallery was built in front of the St. George Hall.
The military gallery is a kind of monument to the heroic military past of the Russian people. It contains 332 portraits of generals, participants in the Patriotic War of 1812 and the foreign campaign of 1813-1814. The portraits were made by the famous English artist J. Dow with the participation of Russian painters A.V. Polyakov and V. A. Golike. Most of the portraits were made from life, but since in 1819, when work began, many were no longer alive, some portraits were painted according to earlier, surviving images. The gallery occupies a place of honor in the palace and is directly adjacent to the St. George's Hall. The architect K. I. Rossi, who built it, destroyed the six small rooms that previously existed here. The gallery was illuminated through glazed openings in vaults supported by arches. The arches rested on groups of twin columns that stood against the longitudinal walls. Portraits were arranged in five rows on the plane of the walls in simple gilded frames. On one of the end walls, under a canopy, was placed an equestrian portrait of Alexander I by J. Dow. After the fire of 1837, it was replaced by the same portrait by F. Kruger, it is his painting that is in the hall today, on the sides of it are the image of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III, also executed by Kruger, and the portrait of the Austrian Emperor Franz I by P. Kraft. If you look at the door leading to the St. George Hall, then on its sides you can see portraits of Field Marshals M. I. Kutuzov and M. B. Barclay de Tolly by Dow.
In the 1830s, A. S. Pushkin often visited the gallery. He immortalized her in the poem "The Commander", dedicated to Barclay de Tolly:
The Russian tsar has a chamber in his halls:
She is not rich in gold, not in velvet;
But from top to bottom, in full length, around,
With my brush free and wide
It was painted by a quick-eyed artist.
There are no country nymphs, no virgin madonnas,
No fauns with bowls, no full-breasted wives,
No dancing, no hunting, but all the raincoats and swords,
Yes, faces full of martial courage.
Crowd close artist placed
Here the chiefs of our people's forces,
Covered with the glory of a wonderful campaign
And the eternal memory of the twelfth year.
The fire of 1837 did not spare the gallery, however, fortunately, all the portraits were taken out by soldiers of the guards regiments.
V. P. Stasov, who restored the gallery, basically retained its former character: he repeated the treatment of the walls with double Corinthian columns, left the same arrangement of portraits, and retained the color scheme. But some details of the composition of the hall have been changed. Stasov lengthened the gallery by 12 meters. A balcony was placed above the wide crowning cornice for passage to the choirs of adjacent halls, for which the arches were eliminated, which rested on columns that rhythmically broke the too long vault into parts.
After the Great Patriotic War, the gallery was restored, and four portraits of the palace grenadiers, veterans who passed the company of 1812-1814 as ordinary soldiers, were additionally placed in it. These works are also done by J. Doe.
Petrovsky Hall
Petrovsky Hall is also known as the Small Throne Room. Decorated with special splendor in the spirit of late classicism, it was created in 1833 by the architect A. A. Montferrand. After the fire, the hall was restored by V.P. Stasov, and its original appearance was preserved almost unchanged. The main difference of the later decoration is related to the processing of the walls. Previously, the panels on the side walls were divided by one pilaster, now they are placed in two. There was no border around each panel, a large double-headed eagle in the center, and on the scarlet velvet upholstery, bronze gilded double-headed eagles of the same size were fixed in diagonal directions.
The hall is dedicated to the memory of Peter I. The crossed Latin monograms of Peter the Great, double-headed eagles and crowns are included in the motifs of the stucco ornamentation of the capitals of columns and pilasters, the frieze on the walls, the painting of the ceiling and the decoration of the entire hall. On two walls there are images of the Battle of Poltava and the Battle of Lesnaya, in the center of the compositions - the figure of Peter I (artists - B. Medici and P. Scotty).
Winter Palace in St. Petersburg: history and modernity. Who created the projects and built, why did not all the owners like to lodge in the palace?
The main and largest residence of the Russian tsars, the Winter Palace, is the creation of the architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli (1700 - 1771). An Italian Parisian who gave St. Petersburg such a recognizable ceremonial appearance.
The imposing building of the palace, with one of its facades reflected in the smooth surface of the Neva, and with the other overlooking the vast Palace Square, inspires awe with a gigantic scope. The Russians, when looking at him, feel legitimate pride in their homeland! A square stretched out along the embankment for 210 meters - its width is equal to 175 meters!
Short description
The surviving complex of the Winter Palace was built in the middle of the 18th century in the Baroque architectural style. Differing in splendor and richness of details. Initially, the interiors were designed in exactly the same style. Today looking excessively pretentious.
In the 70s of the century, under Catherine II, more modestly decorated rooms appeared inside. But, however, more elegant and stylish - they were created by architects Ivan Yegorovich Starov and Giacomo Quarenghi.
The exact number of indoor halls is not reported anywhere: there are approximately 1,100 of them. And the total area of \u200b\u200bthe premises is approximately 60,000 m2!
You should not think that this is unsuitable for, say, the Royal Palace of Madrid. Just the area and height (on 2 floors) of the ceremonial halls of the royal residence has no precedents in Europe ... and the world. Go through them - you will learn a lot of interesting things!
Note that the palace was not always painted in turquoise and white colors. After the fire of 1837, for example, it was repainted in sand-buff. White columns and architectural decor initially stood out against the background of the walls, but later everything was painted over “sandstone-like”.
During the construction of the General Staff building, the architect Karl Ivanovich Rossi proposed to paint everything in a strict gray color with white decoration and columns. It should have turned out very solemnly ... but the project did not receive approval.
Today, the Winter Palace has regained its historical color: turquoise walls with white columns and yellow architectural decor.
- Interestingly, until the second half of the 19th century, buildings were not built in St. Petersburg that were higher than the Winter Palace, that is, 23.5 meters!
What can be seen
Collections are located in the Winter Palace, as well as the Small, Old and New Hermitages attached to it later. And one of the largest in the world, of course. The collection has more than 3 million items!
In addition to a gigantic collection of paintings and sculptures, tapestries and vases, jewelry, the Egyptian collection, visitors can see the original decoration of the ceremonial and residential enfilades. As well as halls for receptions and balls, chamber rooms for work and everyday life of royalty, their relatives and guests.
- The Gold and Diamond Storerooms are visited with separate tickets and only with a guided tour!
History and architecture
Initially, on the site where the Winter Palace is located, the mansion of Admiral Fyodor Matveyevich Apraksin was located. Which is quite logical, because the Admiralty, which built the Russian fleet, is also located nearby.
According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the admiral's estate was the largest and most beautiful in all of St. Petersburg. After the death of the naval commander, the buildings and lands were transferred to the young emperor Peter II, since the Apraksins were relatives of the Romanovs.
First Winter Palace
Erected in the depths of the site between the Neva and Millionnaya streets. In 1712, the wooden two-storey building was rebuilt in stone. As a wedding gift, it was presented to the Tsar by Alexander Danilovich Menshikov.
The residence was rebuilt and expanded according to the design of the architect Georg Mattarnovi in 1716-1720. The construction was carried out, among other things, on the bulk territory reclaimed from the Neva.
The Second Winter Palace was located where the Hermitage Theater stands today. Interestingly, during the restructuring of 1783-1787, the private quarters of Peter I and Ekaterina Alekseevna on the first floor were carefully preserved.
Peter moved to the winter residence from his in 1720. And here in 1725 the first emperor of Russia died (28.01-8.02 according to the new style).
In 1732-1735, a third palace was built for Empress Anna Ioannovna. Designed by Francesco Rastrelli's father, Carlo Bartolomeo. It was much more sweeping than the Peter's residence. And it was located mainly on the other side of the Winter Canal, closer to the Admiralty.
The era of Elizabeth Petrovna
At the time of Peter's daughter, who adored luxury, outbuildings and service buildings were attached to the palazzo with might and main. The complex grew beyond any master plan. And more and more like some Istanbul Topkapi, rather than a European residence. As a result, they decided that this was unworthy of a great empire and set about building a new palace.
The complex that has survived to this day was built according to the project of the architect Rastrelli son. It was laid down under the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna (1754) and basically completed (1762) only under Catherine II.
The surviving building is considered the fifth Winter Palace. Since at the time of its construction for the residence of Elizabeth Petrovna, a fourth was built - a wooden one.
It was located a little further away: on Nevsky Prospekt, between Moika and Malaya Morskaya Street. The construction of the temporary residence was carried out in the spring and summer of 1755 and was completed by November.
The queen's private quarters were located along the Moika. The windows overlooked, and to this day standing on the other side of the river.
The wing in which the heir to the throne lived, the future Peter III, with his wife Ekaterina Alekseevna (future Catherine II), stretched out along Malaya Morskaya Street.
Under Catherine II
In 1764, Empress Catherine II bought the collection that laid the foundation for the Hermitage's world-famous collection. Initially, the canvases were placed in the private chambers of the palace and were not available for inspection. And the name came from the French l’Ermitage, that is, “secluded”.
- Completion, alteration (Catherine did not favor the "golden" splendor of her predecessor) and the expansion of the palace continued throughout the reign of Catherine the Great (1762-1796)
Little has survived from the time of this empress - under Nicholas I, the interiors were thoroughly rebuilt. The only evidence of the preferences and tastes of the brilliant Catherine's era is
- the magnificent Loggias of Raphael, created according to the most accurate copies that arrived from the Papal Palace in the Vatican;
- and the magnificent Great Palace Church, exactly recreated by Stasov after the fire of 1837.
A special building for the Loggias along the Winter Canal was created by Giacomo Quarenghi.
Elizabeth moved into her new winter residence long before finishing. But the building was "commissioned" by its heir, Emperor Peter II. Settled in new apartments in April 1762.
The enfilade of ceremonial halls occupied the entire length of the northern, Neva facade of the palace. And in the north-eastern risalit there is the Embassy or Jordan stairs. Opposite it, on the Neva, on Epiphany, according to tradition, a hole was cut through, in which water was consecrated.
Empress Catherine II did not really like the Winter Palace, like her predecessor. Rastrelli was immediately dismissed from business, and the work was entrusted to the architect Jean-Baptiste Vallin-Delamote. In 1764-1775, in collaboration with Yuri Matveyevich Felten, he created the Small Hermitage.
In which Catherine arranged private evenings and kept art collections. For walks, the empress arranged the Hanging Garden.
The luxurious Pavilion Hall at the end of the building overlooking the Neva was created later, in the middle of the 19th century, according to the project of Andrei Ivanovich Stackenschneider. Today it houses the famous clock in the form of a peacock and a unique ancient Roman mosaic.
From Paul to Nicholas II
Paul I was forced to live in the Winter Palace while his own residence, the Mikhailovsky Castle, was being built. But the two subsequent emperors: Alexander I and Nicholas I, lodged mainly here.
The first loved to travel and therefore did not see much difference where he lived. The second literally personified himself with the power of Russia. And he could not think of living in any other, smaller palace. Most of the surviving front and residential interiors date back to the reign of Nicholas I.
In the first third of the 19th century, according to the project of the architect Karl Ivanovich Rossi, the Military Gallery was created in memory of the heroes of the Patriotic War, and a number of other premises.
1837 fire and rebuilding
By the way, it was under Nicholas I, in 1837, that a grand fire occurred in the Winter Palace. After which the residence was restored literally from scratch. The tragic incident happened shortly before Christmas, on the evening of December 17 (29 New Style). The cause is believed to have been a fire in the chimney.
During the restoration, innovative construction solutions were used for that time. In particular, iron beams in the ceilings, and new chimney systems. And, perhaps, that is why the palace after the repair was preserved in its unchanged appearance - the ceremonial interiors turned out to be too luxurious ...
The restoration work was led by: Vasily Petrovich Stasov and Alexander Pavlovich Bryullov. By the way, the brother of the famous painter who wrote the epic "The Last Day of Pompeii." More than 8,000 people worked daily at the construction site.
Most of the halls received a different decoration in the style of a mature Russian Empire. Interiors have become much more luxurious than before.
Under Alexander II, the residential halls of the Winter Palace were thoroughly altered, arranging them in the fashion of that time.
The next two kings preferred not to live here. Alexander III and his family left the city for security reasons. And when he left the Grand Gatchina Palace, he stopped at Anichkov Palace on Nevsky Prospekt.
His eldest son, Nicholas II, mainly used the Winter Palace for sumptuous balls. Although the personal apartments of the last emperor have been preserved on the second floor of the western suite.
Foreign sovereigns who visited St. Petersburg usually lived here as in a hotel. Entire suites of halls were assigned to the needs of the next guest. The grand dukes also lodged in the imperial residence - there was enough space for everyone.
Winter Palace: halls
The interiors were often rebuilt in accordance with the wishes of the new kings, but the main halls, the main purpose of which was to throw dust in the eyes of foreign sovereigns and envoys, as well as their own subjects, remained unchanged.
The Jordanian staircase, recreated on the site of the Rastrelli Embassy, received a luxurious design: a marble balustrade, giant double columns of Serdobol granite on the second floor, a picturesque plafond "Olympus" with an area of 200 m2 on the ceiling by the Italian painter Gasparo Diziani...
Neva front suite
It begins with the Nikolaevsky anteroom, followed by the stately and austere Great Nikolaevsky Hall. This is the largest room in the palace, its area is 1103 m2! Today, the premises are used mainly for exhibitions.
Behind the Nikolaevsky are the Concert Hall and (with windows to the Neva) the famous Malachite Drawing Room. The interior, which was decorated with 125 pounds of Ural malachite, was created by the architect Alexander Bryullov, who once opened the personal suite of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas I.
Here they dressed for the wedding and Alexandra Feodorovna, the bride of Nicholas II. Festive family breakfasts were also held here before the family moved to the Alexander Palace.
The following rooms were subsequently used as residential by Nicholas II - the apartments of the last emperor were located on the second floor opposite the Admiralty building.
Eastern enfilade
The front rooms (from the Jordan Stairs perpendicular to the Neva) are opened by the Field Marshal's Hall, created even before the fire of 1837 according to the project of Auguste Montferrand (author of St. Isaac's Cathedral). It is decorated with portraits of great Russian commanders: Suvorov, Rumyantsev, Kutuzov.
Next comes the Petrovsky or Small Throne, and behind it the majestic Armorial Hall, created by Stasov in 1837. On the left are: the Military Gallery of 1812 and the luxurious George or Great Throne Hall, all lined with Carrara marble.
Practical Information
Address: Russia, St. Petersburg, Dvortsovaya emb. 32
Opening hours: 10:30 - 18:00: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday; 10.30-21.00: Wednesday, Friday. Monday is a day off
Ticket prices: 600 rubles - an adult (400 - for citizens of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus), children under 18 years old, students and pensioners of the Russian Federation are free!
Official website: www.hermitagemuseum.org
You can get to the Winter Palace on foot from the Admiralteyskaya or Nevsky Prospekt metro stations: 5-10 minutes: look.
