Palace of Prince Oldenburg

On Tchaikovsky Street, one of the most aristocratic thoroughfares of pre-revolutionary St Petersburg, stands a mansion at numbers 46–48, known as the Palace of Prince Oldenburg after one of its later owners. The two-storey building with three-storey side wings is today occupied by the St Petersburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The first known owner of the plot in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was Lieutenant General of Artillery Fyodor Aprelev. From 1837 the house belonged to Prince Ivan Baryatinsky, a privy councillor, and it was under him that the main body of the mansion was built to a design by the architect Yegor Dimmert. In 1858–59 the architect Harald Bosse extended the eastern part of the building, and in 1874 the western wing was completed by the engineer Ivan Merz. In 1896 the house passed to Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the younger sister of Emperor Nicholas II, and her husband, Prince Peter of Oldenburg.

The mansion's interiors were notably lavish: a ceremonial staircase, a drawing room with oak panelling and the mansion's own theatre hall have survived. In 1861 a house church dedicated to Mary Magdalene was consecrated in the building, though it has not survived. In the 1890s restoration work in the building was carried out by the architect Stepan Krichinsky, and in 1910 the interior decoration was undertaken by the architect Mikhail Dubinsky and the artist Nikolai Rubtsov, giving the palace the finished appearance of the early twentieth century.

Olga Alexandrovna's marriage to Prince Oldenburg, contracted for dynastic reasons, proved unhappy: the couple lived apart for many years under the same roof, while the grand duchess's heart belonged to the officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, whom she married after her divorce and the revolution. After 1917 the mansion lost its former purpose — it housed communal apartments, a school and various Soviet institutions that succeeded one another over the following decades.

Since 1988 the building has been occupied by the St Petersburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which uses the historic interiors for business receptions and events. The coats of arms of the families connected with the house have survived on the building's pediment, recalling its aristocratic past.

Having journeyed from the mansion of an artillery general, through a princely residence, to a grand ducal palace and a Soviet institution, the building on Tchaikovsky Street remains one of the most telling monuments to the history of the St Petersburg aristocracy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.