4, Yelagin Ostrov
Subway: Krestovskiy Ostrov
Tel. +7 (812) 430-1131
Open: 10am- 6pm daily (ticket office till 5pm)
Closed: Mondays, last Tuesday of each month
Yelagin Summer palace stands on one of the islands in the North- west region of St. Petersburg. It was commissioned in 1818 by tsar Alexander I as a residence for his mother Empress Maria Fyodorovna. Her former home of Pavlovsk was too far by the standards of the time. Its architect, young Carlo Rossi, became the head of the project. The name of the palace comes from the family of Ivan Yelagin, Russian historian and poet during reign of Catherine II the Great, those lands were bought by the Imperial Family.
The palace complex consists of the main building, three pavilions, kitchen, stables and a garden that surrounds it. After death of Maria Fyodorovna the Yelagin Palace was transferred to Duchess Yuryevskaya and her children. She was a morganatic wife of Alexander II. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and establishment of USSR the palace became the summer residence of Soviet Prime Minister. During German occupation the palace was badly damaged by the Nazi troops. It was subsequently restored after the war in 1950's. In 1987 Yelagin Palace was turned into the Museum of Decorative and Applied Art and Interiors of the 18th- 20th century.
The name of the architect who built the house in the Palladian
style for I.P. Elagin is not known for certain. Some historians
suggest the authorship of J. Quarenghi. The original appearance
of the villa on the islands has not been preserved.
At
the beginning of the 19th century, the island was bought by
Alexander I for his mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna, who found
it difficult to travel to the royal country residences of
Pavlovsk and Gatchina. In 1818, the restructuring of the palace
complex began, Alexander I instructed the chairman of the
Committee for Buildings and Hydraulic Work to solve this
problem. Betancourt. To implement the plan, Betancourt creates a
special commission, in which K. I. Rossi is appointed the chief
architect of Yelagin Island.
K. Rossi erected several
buildings on the island at once: in addition to the
reconstruction of the three-story palace crowned with a dome,
three additional pavilions were built there, as well as the
Kitchen and Stable buildings. The most famous sculptors of that
time, S. S. Pimenov and V. I. Demut-Malinovsky, and decorators,
D. B. Scotty, A. Vigi and B. Medici, were engaged in the design
of the interior of the palace and pavilions.
The oval
hall of the palace was decorated with caryatids and Ionic
half-columns, the dome was painted with bizarre ornaments, and
the walls in most rooms of the palace were lined with artificial
marble (stucco). In one of the rooms, a pure white stucco was
used, outwardly very similar to porcelain, which is why the room
was called the Porcelain Study. The marble walls of other rooms
were painted with flowers, ornaments and scenes from ancient
mythology, and groups of frolicking cupids were depicted on the
ceilings.
The Empress Dowager and her guests were
especially admired by the doors on the first floor of the
Yelagin Palace, which were designed by Rossi himself. Each of
the more than twenty doors is a real work of art: the doors are
lined with precious woods with fine gilded carvings. The door of
the office of Alexander I on the second floor was decorated with
bronze decorations. For the exquisite and perfect design of
doors, the decor of which was not repeated, Yelagin Palace was
called the "Palace of Doors".
After the death of Maria Feodorovna Yelagin, the palace
gradually turned into a “reserve” royal residence, which the
emperors did not pay too much attention to. At the beginning of
the 20th century, the Yelagin Palace was “lowered” in rank -
from the royal residence it turned into a resting place for the
prime ministers of Russia. S. Yu. Witte, P. A. Stolypin, V. N.
Kokovtsov and I. L. Goremykin managed to visit it.
After
the revolution, the Yelagin Palace received the status of a
museum - the Museum of Life was opened in it. There were a lot
of such museums in St. Petersburg at the beginning of the
century, but soon most of them were closed or turned into other
cultural or public institutions. This also happened with the
Yelagin Palace, where a cultural and educational center was
organized, and the best exhibits of the disbanded museum
collection were transferred to the Hermitage, the Russian Museum
and suburban palace-museums.
During the Great Patriotic
War, the palace was badly damaged - one of the shells that fell
into the chimney led to a fire. Immediately after the victory,
the architect V. M. Savkov began preparing the palace for
restoration, bringing together the surviving pieces of marble
and fragments of moldings and paintings. According to these
fragments and sketches, the interior decoration of the Yelagin
Palace was subsequently restored.
Renovated in 1960 under
the guidance of architect M. M. Plotnikov, the Yelagin Palace
once again became a museum, which houses collections of art
glass and porcelain, as well as embroideries, wood and metal
products. At the beginning of perestroika, when the Museum of
Leningrad Artistic Glass was closed, the collection of its
exhibits was also transferred to the Elaginoostrovsky Museum.
The Yelagin Palace also hosted various temporary exhibitions
of works of art and entertaining events in the style of
different eras - Peter the Great, Elizabethan or Catherine. In
front of the Elagin Palace, on the territory of the Central Park
of Culture and Leisure (TsPKiO), picnics and buffets in the open
air and other modern attractions were organized for tourists.
From August 2016 to April 2021, the Yelagin Palace was
closed for large-scale restoration work, but in fact, the phased
restoration continued for 20 years - from the beginning of the
21st century. For the first time in the history of the museum,
according to the inventories of 1826 and the watercolors of the
artist Maxim Vorobyov of 1821, the historical office of
Alexander I on the second floor was recreated, where, in
addition to painting, a fireplace, a fireplace mirror, window
decorations, and a hand-made damask damask with which the walls
are upholstered are recreated. Also, for the first time, the
historical interiors of the house church of St. Nicholas the
Wonderworker on the third floor of the building were recreated,
in particular, the decor of 16 semi-columns made of artificial
marble was recreated when clearing the ceiling. The palace
resumes various exhibitions and theatrical tours.