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Summer Palace (Russia)

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

The Summer Palace is the name of three Russian royal residences in St Petersburg, of which only one survives to the present.

The Summer House and Garden from the Moyka River

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Summer House

The diminutive Summer House (1710-14) was designed by Domenico Trezzini in the Baroque style for Tsar Peter the Great. One of the oldest extant structures in the city, this masonry palace is surprisingly modest by Russian Imperial standards and contains just 14 main rooms.

The mansion was designed as an entertainment center and was intended for warm weather use only. Peter moved into the partially completed palace in 1712 and spent summers here until his death in 1725. He occupied the lower level while his wife Catherine preferred the upper rooms.

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Summer Garden

The Summer House shares its name with the adjacent Summer Garden, one of the most romantic places in St Petersburg. The gardens, originally more formal than the current landscape, were the site of Imperial assemblies, or lavish parties which often included balls, feasts, and fireworks. Its fountains are the oldest in St Petersburg.

The park, chosen by Alexander Pushkin as a setting for childhood walks of the fictional character Eugene Onegin, contains over 80 original marble statues and a famous monument to the children's writer Ivan Krylov (1855). An iron-cast grille (http://www.enlight.ru/camera/161/feb21_6758.jpg), separating the park from the Neva embankment, was designed by Georg von Velten and installed in 1781-84. The poet Anna Akhmatova, among others, considered the grille to be the pinnacle of art-casting and one of the symbols of St Petersburg. The palace is now a museum and both the house and gardens are open to the public.

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Summer Palaces

The Summer Palace of Elizaveta Petrovna in 1756.

There used to be two wooden Summer Palaces in front of the Summer Garden. Both were designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli for the Russian Empresses. The first one (1730) was an one-storied baroque structure, with 28 rooms, a spacious central hall, and a system of interior waterways. The second one (1741-44) was a large and imposing mauve-walled edifice with 160 gilded rooms, adjacent church and a fountain cascade.

The second palace was the chief residence of Empress Elizabeth in the Russian capital. During the 1750s Rastrelli added to the complex a Hermitage pavilion and an opera house. Catherine the Great effectively sealed its fate by moving her court to the newly-built Winter Palace. A year after her death, Emperor Paul (who had been born there in 1754) ordered the delapidated palace to be demolished and replaced it with a new residence, St. Michael's Castle.

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