Millionnaya Ulitsa 5
Tel. 312- 9196
595- 4248
Closed: Tues
Metro: Nevsky Prospekt
Marble Palace or Constantine Palace was constructed in 1768- 85 upon orders of Empress Catherine II the Great. She intended to give it as a present for her favourite (lover) Count Grigory Orlov, thus she chose one of the most distinguished architects in the Russian Empire Russian- Italian Antonio Rinaldi. However Orlov died in 1783 before he could get a chance to move into new residence. Catherine presented Marble Palace to her grandson Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, thus a second name for Marble Palace is Constantine Palace after its first permanent owner.
The palace is located on the 1st Admiralteysky Island, in the quarter
bounded by Palace Embankment, Suvorov Square, Millionnaya Street and
Marble Lane.
The northern facade of the building overlooks the
Palace Embankment, behind it is the Neva River, on the other side of
which is the Peter and Paul Fortress. The eastern half of the same
quarter is occupied by the Northwestern State Correspondence Technical
University, located in the service wing of the palace; between them, in
1994, a monument to Emperor Alexander III by Paolo Trubetskoy was
erected (before that, after dismantling on Znamenskaya Square, it was in
the vaults of the Russian Museum).
To the east of the building,
behind the NWGZTU, there is a monument to A. V. Suvorov on Suvorovskaya
Square by sculptor M. I. Kozlovsky; Trinity Bridge is also located
there. To the south of the building are the barracks of the Pavlovsky
Life Guards Regiment. Opposite the western facade are the Russian
Maritime Register of Shipping, on the other side of Suvorov Square - the
Institute of Culture.
Under Peter I, on the site where the Marble Palace is
now located, the Post Office Yard with a pier built in 1714 was located.
On March 24, 1716, Rastrelli's father and son arrived from Italy at this
Post Office. Near this place since 1714 there was the Animal Court, in
which the first St. Petersburg elephant, presented to the Russian Tsar
by the Persian Shah Soltan Hussein, was placed. After the death of the
elephant on May 23, 1717, they made a stuffed animal out of it and put
it on display in the Kunstkamera, and the Gottorp Globe was placed in
the "elephant barn", which was here until 1726, when it was also
transferred to the Kunstkamera.
A fire in 1737 destroyed the Post
Office Yard and the Elephant House in front of it. The scorched place
was cleared, and this area was called the "Upper Embankment Square." The
site, which became a continuation of the Field of Mars, was empty for
quite a long time, and only in 1768, at the behest of Catherine II, the
construction of a palace began on its territory, which was intended as a
gift to her favorite Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov for his help in erecting
Catherine to the throne. On the facade of the building, the empress
intended to place an inscription in gilded letters: "The building of
gratitude."
The palace was built in 1768-1785 by architect
Antonio Rinaldi. Grigory Orlov died in 1783 without waiting for the
completion of construction. In the same year, Catherine II bought the
building to the treasury from the count's heirs, and in 1796 granted it
to her grandson, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich on the occasion of his
marriage. In 1797-98, the last king of Poland (and also a former
favorite of Catherine) Stanislav Poniatowski, who died suddenly here in
1798, lived in the palace.
After the death of Konstantin
Pavlovich in 1831, Emperor Nicholas I transferred the Marble Palace into
the possession of his second son, Admiral General and one of the future
organizers of the peasant reform, Konstantin Nikolayevich. The building,
which was already in disrepair, was restored and designed by the
architect Alexander Bryullov in the 1840s.
After the death of
Konstantin Nikolaevich, the palace was owned by his widow Grand Duchess
Alexandra Iosifovna. In 1911, the palace was inherited by their son,
Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich. After him, the owner of the
Marble Palace was the son of Konstantin Konstantinovich, Prince John
Konstantinovich. John's brother, Gabriel Konstantinovich, wrote a memoir
entitled "In the Marble Palace".
After the February Revolution,
the palace was sold to the Provisional Government to house the Ministry
of Labor. After the October Revolution, in 1919-36, the building housed
the Academy of the History of Material Culture, and after its abolition,
a branch of the Central Lenin Museum. To accommodate the exposition, the
palace was redesigned by architects N. E. Lansere and D. A. Vasiliev.
From the 1950s until the end of the 1980s, an Austin-Putilovets
armored car was located on a pedestal in front of the palace (with a
break in the 1970s, when it was in the lobby of the palace), installed
in memory of the speech of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin from a similar armored
car upon arrival in Petrograd 3 (16) April 1917. Then the armored car
was transferred to the Artillery Museum, and in 1994 the vacated
pedestal was occupied by the monument to Alexander III by Paolo
Trubetskoy.
In 1992, the Marble Palace was transferred to the
Russian Museum. The halls of the Marble Palace housed a permanent
exhibition "Foreign Artists in Russia in the 18th - first half of the
19th century", temporary exhibitions of contemporary foreign and Russian
masters are regularly held. Currently, the palace is also used for
various congresses.
The Marble Palace is a masterpiece of the
architecture of early Catherine's classicism. It was built in
1768-1785 according to the design of the Italian architect Antonio
Rinaldi. Until the end of the XIX century. J. Quarenghi was
considered the author of the palace. For the first time, the name of
the true author of the project with the discovery of the author's
drawings of the main staircase was named only in 1885 by the
protodeacon of the Church of the Marble Palace V. Orlov.
This
is the first building in St. Petersburg, the facades of which,
unlike most buildings in the city, are lined with natural stone -
granite and marble. Hence the original name: "Marble House". In
addition, the Marble Palace is the most Italian building in the
city, it has the spirit of the Florentine Renaissance palazzos, and
the memory of the palace in Caserta, where Rinaldi worked under L.
Vanvitelli before coming to Russia.
The building of the
Marble Palace is an example not only of the peculiarly interpreted
composition of the Italian palazzo, but also, according to the
definition of V. G. Vlasov, "a generalized image of the classic
palaces of all Western European architecture." In addition to the
palace in Caserta, the researcher names Palazzo Valmarana in Vicenza
(designed by Andrea Palladio, 1565), Palacio Real (Royal Palace) in
Madrid (designed by F. Juvarra, 1735), Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi in
Rome on Santi Apostoli Square (G. L. Bernini, 1664-1666), Schönbrunn
Palace in Vienna (Fischer von Erlach the Elder, project 1693) and
many other buildings.
Rinaldi showed himself in this building
as a true painter of architecture, using a palette of colored
marbles instead of paints. The lower floor of the building is faced
with harsh granite, the two upper floors 12.5 m high (with a total
building height of 22 m), united by a large Corinthian order, are
decorated with pilasters of pinkish Tivdi marble from Karelia,
contrasting with bluish-gray Ruskeala marble from quarries in
Finland. Such a delicate mother-of-pearl range, beautiful both on a
bright sunny day and in cloudy weather, has faded somewhat due to
surface erosion from time to time and an aggressive urban
environment. But in the rain, when the wet marble becomes
unexpectedly saturated in color, against the background of the gray
sky and the leaden Neva water, Rinaldi's idea appears in all its
glory.
The harmony of light tones is skillfully complemented
by a few gilded details: balusters on the balcony of the southern
facade and details of the wrought-iron fence of the “own garden” on
the eastern side, as well as panels with stucco garlands, flowerpots
on the roof parapets, creating allusions of the Rococo style.
However, the composition is built according to the "French scheme":
a closed volume with a courtyard - the court-doneur - in the eastern
part. It is known that Empress Catherine II did not like the
magnificent "Rastrelli baroque" of the previous era. However, the
general architectural style retains baroque features, in particular
in the protruding risalits, the built-on attic and the clock tower
of the eastern façade. The central part of the eastern façade, with
a slight unraveling of the entablature and attic, is framed by
semi-columns. Two statues on the attic and compositions of military
armor were made by F.I. Shubin. Along the entire perimeter of the
roof parapet, 86 decorative flowerpots made of light dolomite
limestone are installed.
The “Italianisms” of the Marble
Palace are combined with a chamber mood unusual for the grand palace
architecture. And in the interiors, as the researchers note, "the
principle of rococo is laid down, where each group of rooms ...
existed as if closed," which is a continuation of Rastrelli's
principle of "motority" of the rocaille organization of interior
space."
The main staircase of the Marble Palace is lined with
bluish-silvery marble. It is covered with cylindrical vaults and high
arches, decorated with finely traced wreaths and garlands, and with
round lucarnes. The sculptural decor of the stairs and other rooms, made
by F. I. Shubin, one of the best sculptors of Russian classicism, in
allegorical form told about the exploits of Count G. G. Orlov: eagles
holding wreaths in their beaks, eagles on the capitals of columns and
pilasters, palm branches and oak in the main "marble hall" of the second
floor. On the wall of the front lobby there is a bas-relief with a
profile portrait of the architect Rinaldi by F. I. Shubin - a kind of
"sculptural signature" of the author of the building. In the niches of
the main staircase there are allegorical statues: "Night", "Morning",
"Day", "Evening", "Autumn" and "Spring Equinox". The quality of the
bas-reliefs and sculptures and their placement testify to the fact that
Rinaldi discussed all issues with the sculptors, examined the models in
plaster before they were embodied in marble.
A masterpiece of
Russian classicism architecture is the two-height front Marble
(Orlovsky) Hall, located on the second floor of the northeastern
risalit. From this hall (15.65 X 10.70 m and 11.5 m high) the suite of
front rooms of the palace began. The walls of the hall are lined with
marbles of seven types of more than thirty shades: Ural, Karelian,
Greek, Italian marble, as well as Baikal lapis lazuli. Pilasters of pink
marble with white veins, Corinthian capitals and bases are gilded.
Allegorical bas-reliefs on the themes of ancient Roman history,
unambiguously reminiscent of Orlov's military exploits, were made by
sculptors M. I. Kozlovsky and F. I. Shubin. The composition of 14
bas-reliefs and desudéportes (1780-1782) includes images of eagles with
garlands and wreaths and the famous "Rinaldi flower" - the architect's
"visiting card" of intertwined oak and palm branches.
The
picturesque plafond of the hall "The Wedding of Cupid and Psyche" in
1775 was painted by the Italian Stefano Torelli (in the documents the
plafond is called "The Triumph of Venus"). Modellers I. Foght and A.
Bernaskoni, miniaturist F. Danilov, carpenter A. Meyer took part in the
design of the interiors.
In 1843-1851, the palace was
reconstructed according to the project of the architect A.P. Bryullov.
Another tier was built on, which turned the Marble Hall into a
double-height one (with walls high and windows two stories high). The
upper tier was finished with artificial marble (stucco). Only the front
staircase and the first tier of the walls of the Marble Hall have
retained their original decoration. In 1803-1811, the living quarters of
the palace were redone under the guidance of the architect A. N.
Voronikhin. In 1952-1955, 1963-1965 and 2009-2010, scientific
restoration of the facades and part of the interiors of the palace was
carried out.
The main courtyard from the south and from the side
of the Neva is limited by a forged lattice on pink granite pillars with
marble flowerpots. The fence connects the palace with the service
building, built by the architect P. E. Yegorov in 1780-1787. The
building was rebuilt by the architect A.P. Bryullov in 1844-1847.
Bryullov built a third floor over the building and processed its facades
with pilasters, thus giving the service building a resemblance to the
Marble Palace. The facade, facing the garden, is decorated in the upper
part with a continuous frieze ribbon about two meters high, consisting
of four bas-reliefs on the theme “Serving the horse to man” by P. K.
Klodt. He also created bas-relief compositions for two side pediments.
Until 2011, the former service building housed the North-Western
State Correspondence Technical University.
In 2015, the Bank of
Russia issued a commemorative coin dedicated to the palace in the
Architectural Masterpieces of Russia series.
The northern facade of the building overlooks the
Palace Embankment, behind it is the Neva River, on the other side of
which is the Peter and Paul Fortress.
To the east of the building
behind the Northwestern Territory, a monument to A. V. Suvorov on
Suvorovskaya Square by sculptor M. I. Kozlovsky; Troitsky Bridge and the
main building of St. Petersburg State Institute of Cinematography are
also located there.
To the south of the building are the barracks of
the Pavlovsky Life Guards Regiment.
Opposite the western facade is
the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping.
In front of the eastern
facade there is a monument to Alexander III by P.P. Trubetskoy, in
1909-1937. standing on Vosstaniya Square.