Wedding Palace No. 2

On Furshtatskaya Street stands a mansion with the status of a protected federal monument, occupied since 1963 by Wedding Palace No. 2 — one of the two oldest institutions of its kind in the city. The building's vivid eclectic façade sets it sharply apart from the neighbouring apartment houses on this street, built up mostly in the late nineteenth century.

The mansion was built for Konstantin Vargunin, a member of a family of entrepreneurs who owned the Neva Paper Mill outside St Petersburg. The design was created by the architect Alexander von Hohen, though the client himself took an active part in developing the house's appearance. The building was set on a rectangular plot with a carriageway into the courtyard; Vargunin himself never moved into the mansion — his son and daughter-in-law settled there instead.

The building is executed in the Eclectic style, combining motifs from different eras: the rusticated finish of Classicism, decorative vases in niches in the spirit of Neo-Baroque, second-floor window surrounds in a Renaissance taste, and the asymmetrical façade composition characteristic of Art Nouveau. The central part of the façade is flanked by two risalits of different shapes; the left one is crowned by a projecting bay window with a cartouche bearing the owner's initials, and a broad attic. Inside, rich decoration was preserved: oak panelling adorned the walls of the drawing room, dining room and study, and the vestibule was occupied by a broad two-flight staircase, lit by three windows facing the courtyard. The dining room was covered by a stained-glass ceiling, and one of the halls was adorned with a fireplace reaching almost to the ceiling; the entrance to the courtyard was framed by wrought-iron gates on stone piers with lanterns.

In 1912–1916 the house was leased out, and for a time it housed the Spanish embassy, and after the revolution, the administration of the Baltic Hospital Flotilla. The building then stood empty, housed a reception centre for homeless children, and later communal apartments and the "Bednota" labour artel were set up in it. From the 1930s to the 1950s the former mansion was occupied by the city dental institute, and during the siege a local air-defence service operated in it. From the early 1950s the Leningrad branch of the Union of Societies for Friendship with Foreign Countries worked here.

Since 1963 the building has been used for a new purpose — as a Wedding Palace, where the ceremonial registration of marriages takes place in the historic interiors of the former mansion. Over more than six decades of operation the palace has become one of the symbols of St Petersburg's wedding traditions.

Today the Vargunin mansion retains its status as a state-protected architectural monument and remains one of the most recognisable buildings on Furshtatskaya Street, linking the history of pre-revolutionary entrepreneurship with a modern civic ceremonial tradition.