Marble Palace

The Marble Palace stands on Palace Embankment of the Neva, facing the Peter and Paul Fortress, and since 1992 has been a branch of the State Russian Museum. The building was constructed from 1768 to 1785 to a design by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi on the orders of Catherine II — the empress presented the palace to her favorite, Count Grigory Orlov, in gratitude for his help in her accession to the throne. Orlov died in 1783 without living to see the construction completed, and Catherine bought the building back from his heirs, later passing it to her grandson, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich.

The palace was the first building in Saint Petersburg whose facades were faced with natural stone — granite and multicolored marble — which is how it got its name. The lower floor is finished in austere granite, while the two upper floors, unified by the Corinthian order, are faced with pinkish Tivdiya marble from Karelia combined with grey-blue Ruskeala marble from Finland. Researchers call the building the most "Italian" in the city: its appearance evokes the spirit of Renaissance palazzi and of the palace at Caserta, where Rinaldi had worked before coming to Russia. The sculptural decoration of the facades and the main staircase was created by Fedot Shubin, and the parapet of the roof is crowned with eighty-six decorative vases of dolomitic limestone. The palace's central space is the double-height Marble (Orlov) Hall, finished with seven kinds of marble in more than thirty shades, with a painted ceiling by Stefano Torelli, "The Wedding of Cupid and Psyche."

In the 19th century the palace was owned by members of the House of Romanov, including Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich, one of the initiators of the abolition of serfdom, and his descendants. In the 1840s the interiors were remodeled by architect Alexander Bryullov, who added an upper tier to the Marble Hall. After the revolution the building was occupied by the Academy of the History of Material Culture and later by a branch of the Lenin Museum; from 1940 to 1992 an armored car stood on a pedestal in front of the main facade, from which, according to legend, Lenin addressed the crowds in 1917. In 1994 the pedestal was taken over by a bronze monument to Alexander III by Paolo Trubetskoy, previously removed from Znamenskaya Square.

Today the halls of the palace, transferred to the Russian Museum in 1992, house a permanent exhibition of Western European art and the Ludwig Collection — a collection of contemporary foreign and Russian art — and also host temporary exhibitions and international congresses. The monument is recognized as one of the key examples of early Catherinian Classicism in Russian architecture.