Coordinates: 59°56′26.5″N 30°20′15.5″E / 59.940694°N 30.337639°E / 59.940694; 30.337639
- For an earlier Summer Palace, see Summer Palace of Peter the Great
The Summer Palace (Russian: Ле́тний дворе́ц) is either of the two wooden Baroque palaces built by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli on Tsaritsa's Meadow behind the Summer Garden in St. Petersburg. Neither building survives.
It was in 1730 that Rastrelli designed the first wooden palace for Empress Anna. This was a one-storied structure, with 28 rooms, a spacious central hall, and a system of interior waterways.
After Elizaveta Petrovna ascended the Russian throne in 1741, she commissioned Rastrelli to demolish the palace of her predecessor and build a "Venetian-style" residence for herself.
The new Summer Palace, completed in 1744, was the chief residence of Empress Elizabeth in the Russian capital. It was a large and imposing mauve-walled edifice with 160 gilded rooms, adjacent church and a fountain cascade. A Hermitage pavilion and an opera house were added to the compound in the 1750s.
In 1762, Catherine the Great moved her court to the newly-built Winter Palace, effectively sealing the fate of the older residence. A year after her death, Emperor Paul (who had been born there in 1754) ordered the dilapidated palace to be demolished and replaced it with a new residence, St. Michael's Castle.
Famous quotes containing the words summer and/or palace:
“While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically, wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January,—wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)