Description of the attraction
Near the park building "Concert Hall" there is a small round pavilion built from parts of ancient marbles taken out of Greece under Empress Catherine the Great, called "Kitchen-ruin". Once in this pavilion, part of the collection of marbles was kept, which were delivered to the empress from Rome by Refenstein, who was in charge of all her artistic affairs there.
The Kitchen Ruin Pavilion was built by the architect Giacomo Quarenghi in the 1780s and belongs to one of his finest works.
In the project, the building looks so realistic, as if the architect copied it from life in one of the cities of the Apennine Peninsula, where the local population often huddled in huts built from the remains of ancient buildings. It is not for nothing that one of the pre-war travel guides to Tsarskoye Selo can read that those who have not been to Italy, having found themselves near this pavilion, can see a picture familiar to the surrounding area of Rome. The unusual building was noted by connoisseurs as an architectural imitation of "such a charming, convincing authenticity that you can hardly believe in its fake." In their opinion, everything in the pavilion is done so skillfully that, looking at it, one gets the impression of a “real ruin”.
"Kitchen-ruin" - a building under a simple and rough roof, as if hastily erected from the first ancient debris that came to hand. The brickwork is in places open and “weathered”, the windows are asymmetrical, the outer plaster is covered with cracks. In terms of the "Kitchen-Ruin" it has a round shape, complicated by 2 ledges-rectangles. Between the projections, the curved areas of the facade are processed with columns.
During the construction of the pavilion, Quarenghi used fragments of real antique monuments at his disposal: marble capitals, cornice and frieze with carved garlands. The appearance of the pavilion on the facade is complemented by a copy of a dilapidated antique statue of a Roman consul. The entrance to the building is made in the form of a semicircular niche, in the depth of which there is a door.
In the intervals between the columns and the upper section of the walls, 6 plaster bas-reliefs, made by the sculptor Concezio Albani, were installed. The bas-reliefs were deliberately damaged in order to give them the appearance of deep antiquity. With antiques in the neighborhood there are limestone friezes, executed and specially "aged" by the same sculptor (who also made other finishing details). Albani's plaster bas-reliefs are likened to the remains of marble compositions. They repeat 3 plots that were borrowed from the ancient originals: Jupiter - the king of the gods and his wife Juno with attributes (peacock and eagle), grieving Demeter (Ceres) and the servant who washes her feet, Diana and Apollo.
Despite the fact that the "Kitchen-Ruin" was used to warm dishes during meetings in the Concert Hall, since the end of the 1780s it has contained part of the marble statues from the antique collection of Catherine II, after whose death they were sent to the Imperial Hermitage.
During the Great Patriotic War, the windows and doors of the pavilion were lost, the roof was damaged, the interior decoration was destroyed, and the bas-reliefs were seriously damaged. Under the threat of complete loss, the antique parts were in disrepair, the marble exfoliated and crumbled. In 2010, restoration work was carried out, as a result of which the "Kitchen-Ruin" pavilion acquired its original appearance. The building is currently used by the park guard.
