Elagin Palace

The Elagin Palace is a summer imperial palace on Yelagin Island in Saint Petersburg, and a monument of Russian Classicism. Both the island and the palace took their name from the estate's first owner, Ober-Hofmeister Ivan Yelagin, under whom a manor house in the Palladian style was built; the architect of this first structure has not been reliably established, though some researchers suggest it may have been Giacomo Quarenghi.

In the early 19th century the island was acquired by Alexander I for his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, for whom it had become difficult to travel to the distant residences of Pavlovsk and Gatchina. In 1818 the reconstruction of the estate began under the direction of Agustín de Betancourt, chairman of the Committee for Buildings and Hydraulic Works, and Carlo Rossi was appointed chief architect of the island. Rossi built a three-story, dome-topped palace, three garden pavilions, and the Kitchen and Stable buildings. The interior decoration was created by sculptors Stepan Pimenov and Vasily Demut-Malinovsky and painters Giovanni Battista Scotti and Antonio Vighi.

The Oval Hall was adorned with caryatids and Ionic pilasters, its dome painted with ornament, and its walls finished in stucco marble; in one of the rooms a snow-white stucco resembling porcelain was used, which gave the room its name, the Porcelain Study. The building's first-floor doors brought it particular fame: each of the more than twenty doors is faced with precious wood species and gilded carving of a unique pattern — earning the palace the nickname "the palace of doors."

After the death of Maria Feodorovna the building became a rarely visited "reserve" residence, and in the early 20th century it served as a retreat for prime ministers — Sergei Witte and Pyotr Stolypin both stayed here. After the revolution a Museum of Everyday Life was opened in the palace, later transformed into a cultural and educational center, while the finest exhibits were transferred to the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, and the suburban palace-museums. During the war the building suffered severely from a fire caused by a shell hitting a chimney. Restoration began immediately after Victory, and work completed in 1960 restored the palace's status as a museum — it came to house collections of glass, porcelain, embroidery, and wood and metal objects.

From 2016 to 2021 the palace underwent large-scale restoration, recreating for the first time, based on historical inventories, Alexander I's study and the interiors of the palace's domestic Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Today the palace hosts exhibitions and tours, and the war-damaged building can be seen in footage of the film "The Sky Slug" (Nebesny Tikhokhod) and in the television series "The Master and Margarita," where it played the role of Professor Stravinsky's clinic.