Аничков дворец / Anichkov Palace - 1874-1914

Описание: Россия на дореволюционных фотографиях
Аничков дворец
Невский проспект
Санкт-Петербург
1874-1914

Russia in pre-revolutionary photographs
Anichkov Palace
Nevsky Prospekt
St. Petersburg
1874-1914

Music:
Waltz from "Life of the Tsar" by M. Glinka


One of the oldest building's on Nevsky Prospekt, Anichkov Palace stands next to the landmark Anichkov Bridge across the Fontanka River. When the building was commissioned by Empress Elizabeth in 1741, the site of the palace was on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, and Nevsky Prospekt was lined with trees. The original architect, Mikhail Zemtsov, gave the building its form and dimensions, while Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli completed the original baroque decorations. Elizabeth gave the completed palace to Aleksey Razumovsky, her favourite and unofficial spouse.
After Razumovsky's death, Catherine the Great bought the palace from his brother and in turn gifted it to her favourite and lover, Grigoriy Potemkin. Between 1776 and 1778, Potemkin employed the architect Ivan Starov to refashion the building.
The palace returned to Imperial ownership at the end of the 18th century, and housed for a short period the offices of the Cabinet of his Highness the Emperor, which managed the Imperial estates and industrial concerns. Later it became the St. Petersburg residence of various members of the Imperial family, including Nicholas I, Alexander II and Alexander III before their ascendance to the throne. After the October Revolution, the Anichkov Palace was used briefly as a museum of St. Petersburg, and in the late thirties became Leningrad's Pioneers' Palace - the local headquarters of the Soviet equivalent of the Boy Scouts. Now named the Palace of Youth Creativity, it is home to a variety of organizations offering after-school education in arts and crafts, sport, sciences, and engineering. Part of the building is also used for the Anichkov Lycee, one of St. Petersburg's most prestigious secondary schools.