General Staff Building

The General Staff Building closes off the southern side of Palace Square and, together with its Triumphal Arch, forms one of the city's most recognisable architectural ensembles. Its two symmetrical wings — once housing the General Staff and the ministries of foreign affairs and finance — were built to the design of the architect Carlo Rossi between 1819 and 1829. Today the western wing is occupied by the military department, while the eastern wing has been handed over to the Hermitage and turned into a museum complex.

The redevelopment of the area in front of the Winter Palace was first conceived under Alexander I: in 1810 the architect Antoine Modüit was commissioned to bring order to the square, but the plan was interrupted by the war with Napoleon. The idea was revisited in 1819, when Augustin de Betancourt, head of the Committee for Buildings, brought Rossi onto the project. The western wing was built incorporating earlier structures by Yuri Felten into its new façade, which is why its base is faced with grey granite, unlike the red granite of the eastern section. The military wing was completed by 1823, the ministry buildings near the Moika by 1824, and the arches over the square by 1826.

Together, the two wings and the arch stretch for almost three-quarters of a kilometre. Rossi concealed the awkward bend of the street meeting Nevsky Prospect at an angle by means of a double arch 28 metres high with a 17-metre span — a device close to ancient tetrapylons and paired defensive gateways. For fire safety, cast-iron structures were used in the interiors for the first time: the rafters, columns and library shelving were all cast to the architect's own drawings. Later, in 1902–1905, a metal lantern dome designed by the engineer Grigory Krivoshein was erected above the western wing, replacing a low stone vault and bringing light into the military library.

The sculptural decoration of the arch commemorates the victory in the Patriotic War of 1812. The restrained initial design, featuring a coat of arms on the attic, was replaced under Nicholas I by a lavish composition: a chariot of the goddess Victory drawn by six horses, its reins held by Roman warriors, created by the sculptors Pimenov and Demut-Malinovsky. The arch was inaugurated in October 1828, at the time the Imperial Guard was returning from its campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The building also endured tragic episodes: in January 1918, on Trotsky's orders, its inner church was destroyed, and during the Siege of Leningrad the building suffered from shelling. In the summer of 1945, columns of victorious soldiers of the Leningrad Guards Corps marched through the arch.

The eastern wing was handed over to the Hermitage in 1993, and the large-scale reconstruction carried out by the Studio 44 bureau was completed in 2013. The space opened to the public a year later with the Manifesta 10 exhibition, after which the permanent collection of modernist art — works by Matisse, Kandinsky and Malevich — was moved there. The enfilades linking five inner courtyards now house collections of 19th-century Western European painting, the Fabergé collection, the Museum of the Guards, and halls devoted to the history of Russia's ministries.

The General Staff Building remains a rare example of an ensemble in which the vision of a single architect united structures from different eras into a coherent composition. The combination of triumphal symbolism, early-19th-century engineering solutions and its present-day museum function makes it one of the key landmarks of central St Petersburg.