Stroganov Palace

The Stroganov Palace stands at the intersection of Nevsky Prospect and the Moika River Embankment and has been part of the State Russian Museum since 1988. The building was constructed in 1753–1754 to a design by the renowned architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli, creator of the Winter Palace and Smolny Cathedral, for Baron Sergei Stroganov, a member of one of Russia's wealthiest families of industrialists and patrons of the arts. The palace became one of the most striking examples of Rastrelli's Baroque-Rococo style in Saint Petersburg's civic architecture.

The building consists of two wings around an inner courtyard, entered through a grand arch. The façades, in the architect's own words, were decorated "in the Italian manner": the overall composition follows a tripartite classical scheme, yet the main façade facing Nevsky Prospect appears distinctly Baroque, with bold projections, three oval windows, clustered columns and a broken pediment bearing the Stroganov family coat of arms in its tympanum. The walls were originally painted sandy-yellow, matching the Winter Palace across the way, and later repainted pink with white trim. Inside, close to fifty state rooms survive, including the Great Hall with a ceiling painting by the Italian artist Giuseppe Valeriani, the grand staircase, and the Mirror Gallery with its lavish Rococo stucco decoration and murals.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the palace was remodeled by the architect Andrei Voronikhin, who created for its owner, Count Alexander Stroganov, an elegant vestibule with a staircase set on massive Doric columns, as well as a domed Mineral Cabinet for the count's geological collection. In the "Egyptian" Physics Cabinet, which served the count as a Masonic temple, Stroganov—a prominent figure in European Freemasonry—received fellow Masons. Among the other surviving interiors are the Picture Gallery, the library, and rooms named after the painter Hubert Robert, whose canvases adorned the chambers.

The Stroganov family owned the palace until 1918, amassing within its walls one of the country's significant art and mineralogical collections. After the revolution, the building was passed between various Soviet institutions and museums, and since 1988, as a branch of the Russian Museum, it has been open to visitors—its historic interiors have been recreated, and it hosts exhibitions devoted to the history of the Stroganov family and to Russian Classicism.