Description of the attraction
Once upon a time, at the very beginning of the city's existence, on the place where the Marble (Konstantinovsky) Palace is now located, there was a Drinking Yard, which in 1714 was converted into a Postal Yard with a pier. The history of the palace began in 1768, when, by order of Empress Catherine II, construction began for her favorite, Count Grigory Orlov. The author of the project was the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi. The construction of the palace lasted 17 years, until 1785, so its potential owner, who died in 1783, could not become its real owner. The empress bought this magnificent building from the heirs of the count, and in 1796 presented it as a gift to her grandson, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, on the day of his marriage.
The palace is called the marble palace because, for the first time in the history of urban planning in St. Petersburg, natural stone cladding was used in the decoration of its facade. Granite and more than thirty varieties of marble of various colors and shades adorned not only the outer walls of the palace, but were also used to decorate its interior interiors. For example, the walls of one of the most beautiful halls - Marble, which was opened in May 2010 after restoration, are faced with Pribaikal lapis lazuli, Karelian, Ural, Italian, Greek marble.
And the main staircase is made according to the idea of Rinaldi from marble of gray-silver shades. The staircase is decorated with marble sculptures "Autumn Equinox" and "Spring Equinox", "Evening", "Night", "Morning", "Day", executed by the sculptor Fyodor Shubin. He also made the rest of the staircase decoration from white Greek marble, including a bas-relief with a portrait of Antonio Rinaldi.
In the construction of the palace, Rinaldi successfully implemented two of its purposes: a city house and a noble country estate - the northern, western and southern facades fit perfectly into the urban development, and from the side of the courtyard we see a noble estate with a ceremonial courtyard, a garden and a fence, which is a wrought-iron lattice on granite pillars with marble vases.
The painter Torelli, sculptors Kozlovsky and Shubin, miniaturist Danilov, carpenter Meyer worked on the decoration of the interiors of the palace. And from 1803-1811. the interiors of the palace were designed under the guidance of the famous architect Voronikhin.
In the main room of the palace - the Marble Hall, there are bas-reliefs "Sacrifice" made by Antonio Rinaldi for St. Isaac's Cathedral. Nearby are the Oryol and Catherine Halls, designed to glorify the activities of Empress Catherine II and the Orlov brothers, then there were the chambers of Grigory Orlov. In the southeastern part of the building there was an art gallery, in which there were more than two hundred masterpieces of painting, including Raphael, Rembrandt, Titian, etc. In the opposite, southwestern part, the Greek and Turkish baths were located.
One of the last owners of the palace was Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov, president of the Academy of Sciences and a famous poet, who wrote under the pseudonym "K. R." Now in the former chambers of the Grand Duke, in the preserved interiors of that time, there is a memorial exposition "Konstantin Romanov - Poet of the Silver Age".
In 1919-1936, the building housed the Russian Academy of the History of Material Culture, later - a branch of the Central Lenin Museum.
Since 1997, in front of the palace, on a pedestal freed from the Austin-Putilovets armored car previously standing here - an analogue of the one from which Lenin spoke in Petrograd in April 1917, a monument - an equestrian statue of Emperor Alexander III by Paolo Trubetskoy
The halls of the Marble Palace house permanent exhibitions of the museum - "Foreign Artists in Russia of the 18th-19th centuries", "Collection of St. Petersburg collectors of the Rzhevsky brothers", "Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum", the only permanent exhibition of Russian art of the 20th century in Russia, thanks to which we have there is an opportunity to study the development of Russian art and its place in world art culture. The palace regularly hosts exhibitions of works by contemporary foreign and Russian artists.
