Description of the attraction
One of the architectural monuments of the city of Kronstadt is the Italian Palace. In 1717, by order of the governor of the city A. D. Menshikov, construction of the palace began. Johann Braunstein was appointed chief architect. Many Italian masters worked under his leadership, hence the name of the palace. But throughout the 19th century, the palace was rebuilt more than once by the architect E. H. Anert, and according to the drawings of the architect A. N. Akutin.
The palace was a three-story building, the facades of which were beautifully decorated with bas-reliefs, pilasters, vases, and the roof was crowned with a balustrade and sculpture. An Italian pond with several dozen fountains, designed by Giovanni Fontana, was built in front of the building's façade. The pond was part of the Merchant Harbor, which served as a haven for ships in winter. There was a large crane on the shore, during wintering, the masts were removed from the ships so that the winter bad weather would not damage the masts themselves and the decks of the ships. In the spring, at the beginning of navigation, the masts were installed in place in the same way. Right there on the shore there is a building reminiscent of the structure of the ancient Greeks - Rybnye Ryad. Here they traded in fish, fresh water from Lake Ladoga.
Prince A. D. Menshikov also owned palace residences in Oranienbaum and St. Petersburg, but they were inferior in beauty and luxury to the palace in Kronstadt. The end of the construction of the palace came at the time of the conclusion of an armistice between Sweden and the Russian Empire, it was then that Prince Menshikov was arrested, and his property, in particular the palace, was transferred to the city treasury. In the Italian Palace, it was decided to locate a school of navigators under the leadership of Stepan Malygin, one of the first Russian explorers of the Arctic. School graduates became professional navigators who calculated the navigation course of ships.
For twenty-seven years, until 1798, the building of the palace housed a corps of naval cadets. Then the building was given over to the Navigation School, later renamed the Naval Technical School, which, even later, was retrained into engineering and existed until the start of the revolution.
In 1815, the first Russian steamship service between Kronstadt and St. Petersburg was opened. Prior to this, communication between the cities was carried out by sailing ships in the summer. In May 1806, the first ships - "passboats" were launched, but by 1815 the factory of the Englishman Charles Byrd was producing a steamer, thanks to which regular passenger flights were launched a little later.
Throughout the history of the palace, it was repeatedly reconstructed and rebuilt, as a result of which the fourth floor was popularly called as the "navigator tower". But due to a large fire that engulfed the Italian Palace in the summer of 1826, the building had to be completely restored and rebuilt. The appearance of the palace became more like a modern type of building. Now it was the House of Officers. Inside it is the theater of the Baltic Fleet, the sailor's club, the Kronstadt TV and radio company, and the publishing house of the Morskaya newspaper. But, despite all the innovations in the appearance of the building, it still bears the imprints of the architecture of the 18th century.
