Description of the attraction
In 1710, for the further expansion of the newly built city in St. Petersburg, they began to distribute land plots along the banks of the Fontanka for the construction of country yards. In 1724, one of them went to A. D. Menshikov's son-in-law Anton Devier, the same one on which the Anichkov Palace was later erected. In 1727, after the fall of the great associate of Peter I, his relatives were also arrested and exiled to Siberia. The site was confiscated.
Its next owner, the merchant Lukyanov, after the issuance of the decree on building up the Nevsky prospect with stone houses, found it more profitable to sell it to Elizaveta Petrovna, daughter of Peter I, who ordered to build a palace on it, which became the first stone structure of Nevsky Prospect.
The palace owes its name to the nearby wooden bridge, which was built by the soldiers of the Admiralty battalion under the leadership of officer Anichkov.
The construction of the palace was carried out according to the project of the architect M. G. Zemtsov from 1741 on the right bank of the Fontanka in the high baroque style. A year and a half later, Zemtsov died, and the leadership of the work on the construction of the palace was transferred to his student G. D. Dmitriev, and then B. F. Rastrelli, who significantly changed the original concept. By the spring of 1751, the decoration of the palace was basically completed, and this made it possible to consecrate its church. The building has an H-shaped plan. Its central part is a three-storey one with a large two-story hall. It connects with a porch to the side three-storey wings, which are crowned with ribbed domes with onion domes. The central facade of the palace turned towards the Fontanka, and not towards Nevsky Prospect. There is also a front yard in which a swimming pool was arranged, connected with the Fontanka canal. The opposite, western, façade of the palace opened onto a regular garden with pavilions and sculptures. High porches with porticoes supporting balconies adorn both facades.
The decoration of the palace premises was carried out according to the drawings and under the direct supervision of Rastrelli. The paintings were made by Antropov, Vishnyakov, and the Belsky brothers. The interior of the church, which occupied the third and second floors of the side wing, parallel to Nevsky Prospekt, was carefully thought out. Its eleven-meter high gilded carved three-tiered iconostasis was famous for the richness of baroque ornamentation.
For more than two hundred years, the palace constantly changed its owners: in the eighteenth century, the empresses presented it to their favorites, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when it again became the property of the Romanov family, a new tradition arose - persons of the royal family began to receive it as a wedding gift. After the revolution, the Museum of the History of the City was opened here, and later the Palace of Pioneers was arranged here. At this time, the decoration of the palace suffered especially badly. Now the Palace of Youth Creativity and the Anichkov Lyceum work here.
Also in the halls of the Anichkov Palace is the Museum of the History of the Anichkov Palace, which was opened in 1991. The museum regularly hosts exhibitions where the best teachers and students of the Palace of Youth Creativity share their professional successes.
