Charles Cameron (architect) - Tsarskoye Selo

Tsarskoye Selo

Cameron's career in Russia started with expansion of the Chinese Village in Tsarskoye Selo park, borrowing design ideas from William Chambers. The theatre of Chinese Village had already been in place, designed by Antonio Rinaldi and Ivan Neelov; Cameron's undisputed additions are the living quarters of the Village and the Chinese Bridges over the canal. During Paul's reign Cameron's buildings were stripped of exterior finishes and later rebuilt by Vasily Stasov in 1817.

In 1780–1784 he redecorated the formerly Rococo halls of the main Catherine Palace built by Bartolomeo Rastrelli in the 1750s; what started as a modest remodeling soon resulted in the most lavish interiors of the whole palace, reminiscent of Palladio, Raphael, Robert Adam and Clerisseau yet blending into Cameron's unmistakingly own style. As early as June 22, 1771 Catherine praised the architect: "There are not yet but two rooms to do and there one rushes, because just here one sees nothing to equal it. I confess that I myself will not tire during nine weeks of watching this."

Catherine had another specific task for Cameron: she envisaged a new, relatively modest Neoclassical building in Tsarskoye Selo near the older Rococo Catherine Palace. Clerisseau, Catherine's first choice, produced drafts for a gigantic and expensive Roman structure based on the Baths of Diocletian, that were rejected out of hand but later influenced Quarenghi and Cameron. In 1782 Cameron started his first standalone building, the Cold Baths, a two-story bathhouse in mixed Italian-Greek classicism with luxurious interiors (notably the Agate Pavilion). In 1784–1787 it was expanded with a two-story gallery (Cameron's Gallery), mixing natural stone Roman ground floor with a lightweight, snow-white upper floor gallery marked with unusually wide spacing between columns. The gallery, adorned with statues of foreign poets and philosophers, became Catherine's favorite promenade for years. It was flanked with a formal garden on one side and an English landscape park on the other.

In the beginning of the Gallery project Cameron himself acted as Catherine's recruiter, hiring fellow Scotsmen to work in Tsarskoye Selo. 73 craftsmen, including William Heste and Adam Menelaws, agreed to move to Russia (many took their families with them), causing a futile protest of the Foreign Office. The number was too high for Cameron, and the Scots eventually dispersed to other projects; Menelaws became assistant to Nikolay Lvov.