Mikhailovsky Castle

Mikhailovsky Castle, also known as the Engineers' Castle, was a former imperial palace in the center of Saint Petersburg, built to the order of Emperor Paul I at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries in the style of Romantic Classicism. The castle was built as a "castle on the water," surrounded by the Moika and Fontanka rivers as well as moats and canals that no longer survive — Paul I, who by that time had become Grand Master of the Order of Malta, attached great importance to the impregnability of his new residence. Work on the project, in which, besides the emperor himself, the architects Vasily Bazhenov and Vincenzo Brenna took part, lasted about twelve years; to speed up construction, which proceeded day and night by torchlight, as many as six thousand workers labored on the site at once, and materials were brought in from other building sites across the city, including Tsarskoye Selo and St Isaac's Cathedral.

The castle's name is linked to its domestic church dedicated to the Archangel Michael, patron of the House of Romanov; according to legend, the very decision to build the castle came after the archangel appeared to a sentry on guard. The palace was solemnly consecrated in November 1800, but the emperor lived in it only briefly: on the night of 12 March 1801, just forty days after moving in, Paul I was murdered by a group of conspirators in his own bedroom during a palace coup. After this the imperial family left the castle, and from 1819 its walls housed the Main Engineering School, from which the building's second name, the Engineers' Castle, derives; among the school's students at various times was the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In front of the castle's south façade stands a surviving bronze equestrian monument to Peter the Great by Bartolomeo Rastrelli the Elder, cast during the sculptor's lifetime but rejected by Catherine the Great; by the will of Paul I it was installed here bearing the dedication "To the great-grandfather from the great-grandson."

Since the 1990s the castle has belonged to the State Russian Museum and, after extensive restoration, has been open to visitors as a museum space, with historic interiors recreated and exhibitions devoted to the era of Paul I. The building remains one of the most enigmatic and legend-shrouded monuments of Saint Petersburg, associated with numerous urban tales of the murdered emperor's ghost.