M. Vorontsov's Estate

The Vorontsov Palace stands on Sadovaya Street, 26, opposite Gostiny Dvor, and is regarded as one of the finest examples of Elizabethan Baroque. Built by Francesco Rastrelli for Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov, it brings together more than fifty state rooms and halls and is today protected as a cultural heritage site of federal significance.

The plots between the Fontanka and what is now Sadovaya Street began to be built up back in the 1720s, and in the 1740s Vice-Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov bought up several neighbouring properties, intending to build a town estate on the scale of the Anichkov Palace. The exact chronology of construction is disputed, but 1758 is considered the most reliable date of completion. It was then, on 23 November, that the housewarming took place, attended by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna herself — she presented her host with a large sum of money and granted him the rank of chancellor, after which the house acquired a second name, the Chancellor's Palace.

The estate occupied an irregularly shaped plot: the main building and side wings formed an enclosed courtyard, while a formal garden with an oval pond and a system of avenues, linked to the Fontanka, was laid out on the side of the cour d'honneur. The façade facing the ceremonial courtyard extends for more than a hundred metres and is executed in Rastrelli's typical manner, with a projecting central avant-corps and two more modest side ones. The Baroque decoration includes elaborate window surrounds, gilded stucco and patterned railings, and the estate's fence was cast to the architect's own designs. Inside, the double-height state hall on the bel étage is decorated with particular splendour: its ceilings are adorned with scenes from ancient mythology, and the walls were painted by the Bolognese painter Angelo Carboni.

The construction ruined its patron — in letters to his friend Ivan Shuvalov, Vorontsov called himself bankrupt because of his own palace — and as early as 1763 he sold the estate to the treasury for 217,000 roubles. The building stood empty for several years, then received foreign guests such as the Prussian Prince Heinrich. Under Paul I the palace was handed over to the Order of Malta: to a design by Giacomo Quarenghi, the Maltese Chapel, with a marble altar and organ, was added on the garden side in 1798–1800; according to city legend, an underground passage led from it to Mikhailovsky Castle.

In 1810 Alexander I gave the palace to the Corps of Pages, for whose needs the architect Alexander Staubert almost entirely rebuilt the interiors, preserving only the façades and a few vaulted galleries; Alexander Pushkin was fond of visiting the shops on the ground floor of the wings, including the bookseller Lisenkov's. The Corps occupied the building right up to the revolution, and in Soviet times it housed military schools; during the war it served as a hospital, and the façades and state rooms were repeatedly restored.

From 1958 to 2017 the Suvorov Military School operated in the palace, and since 2019 the building has housed a judicial body, the Third Court of Cassation. In 2021 a dispute flared up around the estate over the fate of three historic wings that had been declared unsafe — heritage advocates fear their demolition, in defiance of the landmark status granted to the palace back in 2001.