Mariinsky Palace

The Mariinsky Palace stands on St. Isaac's Square and has served as the seat of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg since 1994. It was built between 1839 and 1844 by architect Andrei Stackenschneider on the order of Emperor Nicholas I as a wedding gift for his daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, on the occasion of her marriage to Duke Maximilian of Leuchtenberg. The palace was named after its owner. The building was erected on the site of a reconstructed estate belonging to Count Ivan Chernyshev, which had previously housed the School of Guards Sub-Ensigns — where Mikhail Lermontov studied in the 1830s.

In building the palace, Stackenschneider applied technical solutions advanced for his time: fireproof floors of brick and metal, Ammosov stoves, plumbing, and carefully engineered ventilation. The architect was the first in Russia to use faceted "diamond" rustication on a facade in the manner of Italian Renaissance palazzi, and arranged the enfilades of rooms running into the depth of the building rather than parallel to the facade. The main facade is asymmetrical owing to the irregular shape of the site: it has three projecting bays with pediments, and combines Classicist and Baroque elements in an eclectic manner. The interior preserves the Rotunda, with its two-tiered marble colonnade and a dome nearly seventeen meters high; the Pompeian Hall, decorated with murals on themes from Russian literature; the Ballroom, with a fresco by Antonio Vighi; and a unique gently sloping ramp, built at Nicholas I's personal request for his daughter, who suffered from a joint disease.

During the lifetime of Maria Nikolaevna and her husband, the palace housed one of the finest private art collections in Europe, and hosted balls and concerts attended by figures such as Vyazemsky and Odoevsky and the Vielgorsky musicians. In the 1880s the heirs sold the building to the treasury: from 1884 it became the seat of the State Council of the Russian Empire, and, together with the Winter Palace and the Tauride Palace, was regarded as one of the capital's three "political" palaces. In 1906–1908 architect Leonty Benois added a separate wing containing the Grand Assembly Hall.

After the 1917 Revolution the palace housed the Provisional Government, and later Soviet institutions, including dormitories and the Industrial Academy. During the Siege the building suffered from shelling, but was mothballed and later restored. From 1945 the Leningrad City Council met here, and during the 1991 putsch the palace became the center of resistance to the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) in the city. Since 1994 the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg has worked in the Mariinsky Palace; in the 2010s a large-scale restoration of the historic interiors was carried out.