Kamennoostrovsky Theatre

On Kamenny Island stands Russia's only surviving wooden theatre building from the classical era. The landmark was built in 1827 to a design by architect Smaragd Shustov, and since 2005 it has served as the second stage of the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre.

The idea of a summer theatre near St Petersburg arose in 1826, when the capital's main opera and ballet stage closed for restoration after the fire of 1818. The building was initially planned for Yelagin Island, next to the dacha of Nicholas I, but the site eventually chosen was on Kamenny Island by the Bolshaya Nevka, with a view across to the Yelagin Palace. 40,000 roubles were allocated for construction; the walls were framed in timber, and the auditorium was given a raked stalls floor and a raisable "masquerade" platform for balls. According to legend the building went up in just forty days — restoration work carried out in 2007–2012 confirmed that the frame really was assembled from prefabricated elements within that time. The opening took place on 1 July 1827 with a production of the comedy "Two out of Four" and the vaudeville "The Cossack Poet".

The main facade is adorned with an eight-column Corinthian portico, and the pediment bears a carved wooden relief of theatrical attributes — a lyre, masks, and musical instruments. Sculptural groups on classical themes once stood in front of the facade but disappeared in the revolutionary year of 1917, and the auditorium could seat up to 750 spectators. A major overhaul of the building in 1843–1844 was long attributed to the architect Albert Cavos; later research showed that he did not dismantle the structure but carefully reinforced its foundations and redesigned the auditorium according to his own acoustic method.

By the late 1870s the theatre had lost its popularity and for a time was used as a scenery store; in 1900 the management planned to demolish it, and the building was saved only by a campaign mounted by the St Petersburg intelligentsia. During the Soviet years the stage was restored and adapted for new purposes several times: in 1932–1933 under the direction of Yevgeny Katonin, and in the 1960s to a design by Irina Benois, after which the Leningrad television studio and its own theatre moved in for many years. During the war the building was protected from incendiary bombs and avoided serious damage.

In 2005, by presidential decree, the landmark was transferred to the Bolshoi Drama Theatre, and between 2007 and 2010 a large-scale restoration took place: the interiors were recreated from scratch, and beneath the building itself a spacious underground area was excavated for stage machinery and service rooms — four times the footprint of the wooden structure above ground, requiring an unconventional engineering solution because of the high groundwater level in the Neva delta. The works cost 1.665 billion roubles, while more than seventy per cent of the original timber structures were preserved.

The Bolshoi Drama Theatre's first season on the historic stage opened in September 2012 with a production of "The Mistress of the Inn" (La Locandiera) based on the play by Goldoni. Today the theatre is a rare example of a heritage building adapted for year-round use without losing its authentic appearance, and one of the country's few surviving examples of nineteenth-century wooden theatre architecture.