Tauride Palace

The Tauride Palace stands on Shpalernaya Street and is one of the most significant works of 18th-century Russian Classicism. It was built in 1783–1789 by the architect Ivan Starov as the Saint Petersburg residence of His Serene Highness Prince Grigory Potemkin-Tavrichesky, a military commander and statesman who received his honorary title for the annexation and development of Crimea (Tavrida). Behind the palace, the landscape architect William Gould laid out an extensive landscape park, the Tauride Garden, which survives to this day.

The palace's architecture is marked by restrained, almost austere façades that contrast strikingly with the exceptional opulence of its interiors. At the far end of the main courtyard rises a two-storey central block with a six-column Doric portico and a flat dome on a low drum; the severe wall planes are crowned with an entablature bearing a triglyph frieze. Two-storey side wings are joined to the central block by single-storey galleries, forming a broad forecourt. Beyond the main vestibule lies a stucco-adorned rotunda leading into the vast White Column (Catherine) Hall—one of the largest palace halls in Europe—behind whose double colonnade a winter garden once stood. Among the surviving interiors are the Picture Hall, the Tapestry Drawing Room, and the Chinese Hall with its polychrome wall and ceiling paintings.

After Potemkin's death in 1791, the palace was purchased by the treasury on the orders of Catherine II, while her son Paul I, out of dislike for his mother's favorite, turned the building into barracks for a Horse Guards regiment. The palace was later restored to its original purpose, and from the early 20th century it acquired national significance: from 1906 to 1917 it housed the State Duma of the Russian Empire, its interiors having been remodeled for the purpose by the architect Pyotr Shestov. During the February Revolution of 1917, the palace housed the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and the Provisional Government; it was also where the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' Deputies emerged, and in January 1918 it hosted the sole session of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly.

Today the Tauride Palace serves as the headquarters of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of Member Nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States and of the Council of Legislators under the Federal Assembly of Russia. The building has preserved its historic layout and some original décor, and the adjoining Tauride Garden remains one of the city center's favorite recreational spots for residents of Saint Petersburg.