The Catherine Palace was the Rococo summer residence of the Russian tsars, located in the town of Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin), 25 km south-east of St. Petersburg, Russia.
At this time: Museum. Opened for tourists.
Catherine’s Palace, once belonging to Catherine I, Rastrelli began to rebuild when Elizaveta Petrovna. Six times to destroy it before the Foundation and again rebuilt. The very architecture of the Palace of the future Empress Catherine II did not like. She, as a true daughter of Education, fond of classicism and Baroque considered pretentious style and its obsolete. However, ascending the throne, Catherine began to live in the Palace. As is known, it is in the Tsar’s Village of the captain’s daughter Masha Mironova and met a nice lady who finally found out who was right and who is wrong in history, which came with Петрушей Гриневым.
The Palace, as always happens at Rastrelli, is not the main facade. The North side with a huge open courtyard, looking at the Alexandrovsky Palace and the South, facing the Park, the same great. The main thing here is the Suite of state rooms of the first floor. Special impression of the Great hall. During the day he is filled with light of the huge two-story Windows, reflected in the countless mirrors. The evenings in the жирандолÑÑ… lit 700 candles; their light reflected gilt carving and a patterned parquet floor. The ceiling height of the hall – 7 meters, so in the winter it and other rooms of the Suite before meals протапливали for a whole week.
The main event was the opening of the Amber room of the Palace, who disappeared during the war and recreated again.
The residence originated in 1717, when Catherine I of Russia engaged the German architect Johann-Friedrich Braunstein to construct a summer palace for her pleasure. In 1733, Empress Anna commissioned Mikhail Zemtsov and Andrei Kvasov to expand the Catherine Palace. Empress Elizabeth, however, found her mother’s residence outdated and incommodious and in May 1752 asked her court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli to demolish the old structure and replace it with a much grander edifice in a flamboyant Rococo style. Construction lasted for four years and on 30 July 1756 the architect presented the brand-new 325-meter-long palace to the Empress, her dazed courtiers, and stupefied foreign ambassadors.
During Elizabeth’s lifetime, the palace was famed for its lavish exterior. More than 100 kilograms of gold were used to gild the sophisticated stucco façade and numerous statues erected on the roof. It was even rumoured that the palace’s roof was constructed entirely of gold. In front of the palace a great formal garden was laid out. It centres on the azure-and-white Hermitage Pavilion near the lake, designed by Zemtsov in 1744, overhauled by Rastrelli in 1749 and formerly crowned by a grand gilded sculpture representing The Rape of Persephone. The interior of the pavilion featured dining tables with dumbwaiter mechanisms. The grand entrance to the palace is flanked by two massive “circumferences”, also in the Rococo style. A delicate iron-cast grille separates the complex from the town of Tsarskoe Selo.
Palace startles with the fabulous wealth of both external and internal finishing. The overall impression is determined by the size (length of more than 325 m), complex rhythm of the divisions, the richness of decoration. The ensemble of the Palace consists of a Central building and two symmetrical wings, the United galleries (architects Ð.КваÑов and С.ЧевакинÑкий), reworked in полноÑтажные housing. Фланкируют Palace at the ends of the two more hulls – Church (architect. И.Ð’.Ðеелов) and Zubovsky (architect. YU.M. Felten). To them adjoin one-storey service corps, representing two huge arc – circumference. The Central part of the facade дворца. click to zoom
The Central part of the Palace – the Average house – originated from the “stone chambers on 16 Ñветлицах” Catherine I, built by architect And. Браунштейном in 1724. The layout of these chambers are still stored in the vaults of the Catherine Palace.
Average house decorated with the Atlantes and caryatids, картушами and маÑкаронами on the pediments and above the Windows, richly decorated capitals of columns (previously on the roof there were statues and vases). On the main front of the Middle of the house – cartouche with the crown and the monogram of Empress Catherine I “E”. In 1756 the sculptural decoration of the Palace were covered with gold leaf. The external decoration of buildings, created instead of galleries, carried out for the decoration of the facade of the Middle of the house. Especially magnificent in the Baroque style decorated the facade of the Church of the housing. Not less than magnificent and strict Zubovsky housing. Circumference completes forged the cast-iron fence with a gate and the coat of arms of Russia. Because of the abundance of gilded details of the gate called “Golden”. In 1756 the only gilding on the gate, vases, statues, stairs, facades, the interiors of the Palace took about a hundred kilograms of gold. In addition to the Central, “gold” gate to the front yard lead and two side. The most interesting of iron, and the Rear facade of the Palace. Figure of the artist Ð’.Садовникова adjacent to the Church body. They met on the drawing : Rastrelli in 1749 ÑлеÑарным master Кордони. Becoming a chief architect of the king Sat down in 1748, f. B. Rastrelli immediately started to work in the Palace. The main stage of the restructuring took place from 1752 to 1756 year. The outstanding architect immediately identified the most important link of reform: the formation of ensemble around the main axis of the Arsenal, the Hermitage and the need to replace the wooden galleries with columns between two wings (architects A. Kvasov and With. ЧевакинÑкий) on полноÑтажные design. A truly magnificent Large, or the Throne hall of the Palace with an area of 1000 square meters, with a ceiling height of seven meters. He flooded with streams of light pouring through the huge bunk window, located opposite each other, and an abundance of gilded wood carving and mirrors in the decoration of the walls creates the illusion of infinite space of the hall. The whole area of the ceiling from 1753 to 1757, he occupied the picturesque giant three-part plafond Triumph of Russia” works of the artist Д.Валериани. Later it was replaced by paintings Франчуоли and Вундерлиха. Currently, the angular parts of the ceiling of the “Allegory of Victory” and “Allegory of Peace” in his time seized by decree of Paul I, found in the Engineering castle “Golden gate”. click to zoom in and returned to its former place.
Among other premises of the rich decoration of distinguished Green dining room, Gallery and Lyons rooms. At facing of walls of the last used lapis lazuli, a parquet floor of this room, drawn from 12 of valuable breeds of wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Immediately at the Art hall of the Palace was the Amber room. It was created on the project And. Шлютера with 1701 on 1711 year a group of well-known German masters-Ñнтарщиков, which included Годфрид Tours and Gottfried ТуÑÑо. There is a tradition that the room was unceremoniously выпрошена the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I of Peter I during his stay in Berlin in 1716 and in the following year, sent to Russia. According to another version of Peter I exchanged it with the king in 55 Russian grenadiers, lathe and a glass of manual work. Without movement, it is a treasure buried in St. Petersburg until 1743, and then master of the Martelli law mounted Amber room in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. In 1755, on the orders of Catherine II, the decoration of the room was postponed soldiers of the guard in the hands of the Tsar’s Village, and the Martelli law of the newly recreated it in one of the halls of the Great Palace. The unique decoration of the rooms is made of amber mosaic panels, decorated with narrow mirrored pilasters, instead of capitals, completed sculptural women’s heads. At the top – wide frieze, painted under amber, on the background of which stood out sharp scope, garlands of flowers, figures of cupids. Twenty-two large panels complement 180 amber boards and incised ornaments in the form of guns, shields, tulips, roses, shells.
In five panels F. Rastrelli put mosaic pictures made of coloured Jasper – allegory of the five senses of man. Golden and dark plates of polished amber in combination with multi-coloured Jasper and gilded tree created a fantastic sight. Exquisite decoration of the room organically complement the plafond “the Wisdom of protecting youth from the temptations of love” and a patterned parquet floors of the rarest breeds of a tree, created by the drawings of Ð’.И.Ðеелова. Bubble brush Fontebasso was lost in the XIX century, and it is the Amber room disappeared during the occupation and is still to be found.
At the same time as the Palace were created and parks and landscape and in the regular style. Over their plan worked gardeners Я.Розен and И.Фохт. Landscape Park was inscribed in the panorama of the countryside, and regular arranged in the form of a descending terraces, ledges. In 1721, made two ledge, divides the Park on Upper and Lower. In 1725, the third step, the mill cascade of ponds. The Park is richly decorated with sculpture, but in the ensemble is dominated by the pavilions: the Hermitage, the lower bath, Upper bath, Grotto and others.
Amber Cabinet or the Amber room.
Amber Cabinet or the Amber room.
In 1743 the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna commissioned the master Alexander Martelli law under the supervision of the chief architect F. B. Rastrelli “fix†the office.” And by 1770 under the supervision of Rastrelli’s office is transformed into the famous Amber room of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, significantly increased in size and luxury.
So much so, that it is still sometimes called the “eighth wonder of the worldâ€. The amber room was created by the master Gottfried Tussauds for the Prussian king Friedrich I. In the finishing mainly used amber. Masterpiece consisted of amber panels, ornaments and pictures. In 1717 already his son, king Friedrich Wilhelm I of the present Cabinet of Peter I as a gift. The amber room was Packed and with great precautions flown to St. Petersburg in 1717. Sudden changes in temperature, furnace heating and drafts destroyed amber piece. Restoration was carried out in 1833, 1865, 1893-1897, 1933-1935 Nikolai years. Serious restoration was planned in 1941. In the beginning of the great Patriotic war Museum values of Catherine’s Palace were taken in Novosibirsk. The amber room decided not to touch because of its fragility, produced its conservation in place. Panels covered with campaign first paper, then the gauze and cotton wool. This is a fatal mistake that determined the tragic fate of a masterpiece, because the Nazis, by looting the Catherine’s Palace, was kidnapped and the Amber room. From 1942 until the spring of 1944 it was put up for review at the Royal castle in Koenigsberg. In August 1944, as a result of massive RAID of the English aviation there was a fire here, but it is considered that the panel thus have not suffered, the room was Packed and hidden in the dungeons of the castle. Boxes with panels were kept in the cellars of the castle up to the beginning of the storming of the city Soviet troops. After the storming of the Soviet troops Koenigsberg in April 1945, the Amber room had vanished. Her fate still remains a mystery. The search for the Amber room, organized immediately after the end of the war, have not given results. At first believed, that it was burned down in the ruins of the Koenigsberg castle, but already since 1946 increasingly expressed the view that the Amber room survived after the fire. Put forward a set of hypotheses, where she now may be: from Konigsberg to Кобурга, from the salt mines of East Germany to the secret vaults of American and Bank safes. It has even been suggested that the Amber room was on the потопленном Marinesko Board the “Wilhelm ГуÑтлоффâ€, or on the United States on account of reparations battleship “Prince Eugenâ€. Since 1979, the Russian experts specially created “Tsarskoe Selo amber workshop†worked on the reconstruction of the missing treasures. To the 300 anniversary of Saint-Petersburg in may 2003, it was restored in full of the Kaliningrad amber.
The old photo. After the Communist’s revolution. Cataloguing and packing things for the sending of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo after the expulsion of the Royal family, the October 1917.