Marble Palace (Мраморный дворец) is one of the first Neoclassical

palace A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...

s in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

. It is situated between the Field of Mars and

Palace Quay The Palace Embankment or Palace Quay (Russian: Дворцовая набережная, Dvortsovaya naberezhnaya) is a street along the Neva River in Central Saint Petersburg which contains the complex of the Hermitage Museum buildings (includin ...

, slightly to the east from New Michael Palace.

Design and pre-1917 owners

The palace was built as a gift from Empress

Catherine the Great , en, Catherine Alexeievna Romanova, link=yes , house = , father = Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst , mother = Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp , birth_date = , birth_name = Princess Sophie of Anhal ...

for Count

Grigory Orlov Prince Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (russian: Князь Григорий Григорьевич Орлов; 6 October 1734, Bezhetsky Uyezd – 13 April 1783, Moscow) was a favourite of the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. He became a leader ...

, her favourite and the most powerful Russian nobleman of the 1760s. Construction started in 1768 to designs by Antonio Rinaldi, who previously had helped decorate the grand palace at

Caserta Caserta () is the capital of the province of Caserta in the Campania region of Italy. It is an important agricultural, commercial, and industrial ''comune'' and city. Caserta is located on the edge of the Campanian plain at the foot of the Camp ...

near

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

, and lasted for 17 years. The combination of sumptuous ornamentation with rigorously classicising monumentality, as practiced by Rinaldi, may be attributed to his earlier work under

Luigi Vanvitelli Luigi Vanvitelli (; 12 May 1700 – 1 March 1773), known in Dutch as (), was an Italian architect and painter. The most prominent 18th-century architect of Italy, he practised a sober classicising academic Late Baroque style that made an eas ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. The palace takes its name from its opulent decoration in a wide variety of polychrome

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite. Marble is typically not Foliation (geology), foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the ...

s. A rough-grained

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

on the ground floor is in subtle contrast to polished pink Karelian marble of the

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s and white

Urals The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through European ...

marble of

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

s and

festoon A festoon (from French ''feston'', Italian ''festone'', from a Late Latin ''festo'', originally a festal garland, Latin ''festum'', feast) is a wreath or garland hanging from two points, and in architecture typically a carved ornament depict ...

s. Panels of veined bluish gray Urals marble separate the floors, while

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

dolomite Dolomite may refer to: *Dolomite (mineral), a carbonate mineral *Dolomite (rock), also known as dolostone, a sedimentary carbonate rock *Dolomite, Alabama, United States, an unincorporated community *Dolomite, California, United States, an unincor ...

was employed for ornamental

urn An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or ...

s. In all, 32 disparate shades of marble were used to decorate the palace. The plan of the edifice is

trapezoid A quadrilateral with at least one pair of parallel sides is called a trapezoid () in American and Canadian English. In British and other forms of English, it is called a trapezium (). A trapezoid is necessarily a Convex polygon, convex quadri ...

al. Each of its four facades, though strictly symmetrical, has a different design. One of the facades conceals a recessed courtyard, where an armored car employed by

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...

during the

October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...

used to be mounted on display between 1937 and 1992. Nowadays, the court is dominated by a sturdy

equestrian statue An equestrian statue is a statue of a rider mounted on a horse, from the Latin ''eques'', meaning 'knight', deriving from ''equus'', meaning 'horse'. A statue of a riderless horse is strictly an equine statue. A full-sized equestrian statue is a d ...

Alexander III of Russia Alexander III ( rus, Алекса́ндр III Алекса́ндрович, r=Aleksandr III Aleksandrovich; 10 March 18451 November 1894) was Emperor of Russia, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 13 March 1881 until his death in 18 ...

, the most famous work of sculptor

Paolo Troubetzkoy Prince Paolo Petrovich Troubetzkoy (also known as Pavel or Paul; russian: Павел Петрович Трубецкой, translit=Pavel Petrovich Trubetskoy; Intra, Italy, 15 February 1866 — Pallanza, 12 February 1938) was an artist and a sc ...

; formerly it graced a square before the Moscow Railway Station. Spb 06-2012 Palace Embankment various 01

Fedot Shubin Fedot Ivanovich Shubin (May 28, 1740 – May 24, 1805) is widely regarded as the greatest sculptor of 18th-century Russia. Biography A peasant's son, Fedot Shubnoy was born in a Pomor village near Kholmogory and, inspired by the example of h ...

Mikhail Kozlovsky Mikhail Ivanovich Kozlovsky (6 November 1753 – 30 September 1802) was a Russian Neoclassical sculptor active during the Age of Enlightenment. Biography Beginning his training at the Imperial Academy of Arts with Anton Losenko in 1764, he we ...

, Stefano Torelli and other Russian and foreign craftsmen decorated the interior with inlaid coloured marbles,

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

, and statuary until 1785, by which time Count Orlov had already died (1783), and the Empress had the palace purchased for her own heirs. In 1797–1798 the structure was leased to

Stanisław II Augustus Stanislav and variants may refer to: People *Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.) Places * Stanislav, a coastal village in Kherson, Ukraine * Stanislaus County, Cali ...

, the last king of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. Thereafter the palace belonged to Grand Duke

Constantine Pavlovich Konstantin Pavlovich (russian: Константи́н Па́влович; ) was a grand duke of Russia and the second son of Emperor Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg. He was the heir-presumptive for most of his elder brother Alexand ...

and his heirs from the Konstantinovichi branch of the

House of Romanov The House of Romanov (also transcribed Romanoff; rus, Романовы, Románovy, rɐˈmanəvɨ) was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after the Tsarina, Anastasia Romanova, was married to th ...

. In 1843, Grand Duke Constantine Nikolayevich decided to redecorate the edifice, renaming it Constantine Palace and engaging

Alexander Brullov Alexander Pavlovich Brullov (, spelled Brulleau until 1822, when the family name was changed according to Russian pronunciation, sometimes also spelled Brulloff; 29 November 1798 – 9 January 1877) was a Russian artist associated with Russian ...

as the architect. An adjacent church and other outbuildings were completely rebuilt, while the interior of the palace was refurbished, in keeping with the

eclectic Eclectic may refer to: Music * ''Eclectic'' (Eric Johnson and Mike Stern album), 2014 * ''Eclectic'' (Big Country album), 1996 * Eclectic Method, name of an audio-visual remix act * Eclecticism in music, the conscious use of styles alien to th ...

tastes of its new owner. Only the main staircase and the Marble Hall survived that refacing and still retain the refined stucco work and elaborate marble pattern of Rinaldi's original decor. Marble Palace and Monument to Alexander III

Marble Palace and Monument to Alexander III

Usage during Soviet times

During the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

era, the palace successively housed the Ministry of Labour (1917–19), the Academy of Material Culture (1919–36), and, most notably, the main local branch of the Moscow-based Central (i.e. National)

Museum (1937–91) with sub-branches across

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

in Lenin's memorial apartments all over the city - the places where he lived or stayed during his various periods in what was then Saint Petersburg.

Present state: a branch of Russian Museum

Currently, the palace accommodates permanent exhibitions of the

Russian State Museum The State Russian Museum (russian: Государственный Русский музей), formerly the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III (russian: Русский Музей Императора Александра III), on ...

, notably "Foreign Artists in Russia (18th and 19th centuries)" and the "

Peter Ludwig Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

Museum at the Russian Museum", featuring canvases by

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

and other Pop Art idols.

References

*Gabriel Constantinovich, Grand Duke. 'Memories in the Marble Palace'. (Gilbert's Books). 2009. *Pavlova S.V., Matveev B.M. ''Mramornyi dvorets''. (Saint Petersburg) 1996. *Ukhnalev A.E. ''Mramornyi dvorets v Sankt-Peterburge''. (Saint Petersburg), 2002.

External links

Marble Palace (Saint Petersburg)

Marble Palace by Saint-Petersburg.com
{{Authority control Palaces in Saint Petersburg Royal residences in Russia Government buildings in Russia Houses completed in 1785 Modern art museums Culture in Saint Petersburg Neoclassical architecture in Russia Neoclassical palaces Art museums and galleries in Saint Petersburg Russian Museum Marble buildings Cultural heritage monuments of federal significance in Saint Petersburg