Winter Palace

The Winter Palace is a former imperial palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, situated in the Dvortsovy Municipal Okrug between Palace Embankment and Palace Square. Serving as the official residence of the House of Romanov, the emperors of Russia, from 1732 to 1917, the palace was constructed on a monumental scale intended to reflect the might and power of Imperial Russia. From this site, the tsars ruled over a vast empire. Today, the palace and its precincts house the Hermitage Museum. The storming of the palace in 1917 became a defining symbol of the October Revolution and the birth of the Soviet state.

The site's history begins with a modest log cabin built in 1704 for Peter the Great, which was relocated in 1711. Peter then commissioned a larger First Winter Palace designed by Domenico Trezzini between 1711 and 1712. Peter soon tired of this modest structure, and a second version was built under Georg Johann Mattarnovi in 1721, where Peter died in 1725. Empress Elizabeth found this palace insufficiently imposing and commissioned the present, fourth Winter Palace, built between 1754 and 1762 by Bartolomeo Rastrelli. A devastating fire broke out on December 17, 1837, burning for thirty hours and destroying the interior. Tsar Nicholas I ordered immediate reconstruction under architects Vasily Stasov and Alexander Bryullov, completing the work by Easter 1839. Following the February Revolution of 1917, the palace housed the Russian Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky. Later that year, Red Guards and sailors stormed the palace, overthrowing the government. The palace suffered further damage during the Siege of Leningrad between 1941 and 1944, and has undergone subsequent restorations in 1984 and 2005.

Since the era of Catherine the Great, a section of the palace known as the Hermitage was used to house the imperial art collection. Tsar Nicholas I recognized the need for public access and organizationally separated the Winter Palace from the Hermitage on February 17, 1852, making the collection more accessible. Prior to this, the paintings collection within the palace had been accessible only to members of the close court circle. Following the 1917 revolution, the entire palace was incorporated into the Hermitage Museum and opened to the general public, transforming the former imperial residence into one of the world's great public museum complexes.

Among the most significant interior spaces is the Military Gallery, which glorifies the Russian victory over Napoleon in the Patriotic War of 1812. Approved by Emperor Alexander I, the gallery features 333 portraits painted over ten years by the British painter George Dawe and his Russian assistants Vasily Golike and Alexander Polyakov, displayed in five rows on the gallery walls. Other notable spaces include the Jordan Staircase, the Peter Room, the St. George Hall, and the Palace Chapel. The largest room in the palace is the Nicholas Hall, a ballroom covering 1,103 square meters, designed by Giacomo Quarenghi in 1793. The Malachite Room, named for its columns and pilasters made of malachite, served as the salon of Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas I, and was the location where the Provisional Government was captured by the Bolsheviks in October 1917.

The present Winter Palace is a masterpiece of Elizabethan Baroque architecture designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli. The building has the overall shape of an elongated rectangle, with four wings enclosing a large inner courtyard. Its principal facade is 215 meters long and 30 meters high, while the total area of the palace complex covers 14.2 hectares. The palace contains 1,500 rooms, 1,886 doors, 1,945 windows, and 117 staircases, with a total floor area of 233,345 square metres. The exterior features a three tiered structure with abundant columns in colossal order, a continuous cornice band separating the ground floor from the upper state floors, and a roof balustrade adorned with vases and 3.5 meter high statues. The palace color has changed over time and remains a subject of discussion, currently displaying a bluish green. Following the 1837 fire, the exterior was restored unchanged, but the interiors were redesigned in various styles, leading to the palace being described as a 19th century palace inspired by a Rococo model. Innovative iron roof constructions were implemented during the 1837 reconstruction to prevent future fires.

The Winter Palace is located in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and is the central building of the Hermitage Museum, accessible to the general public as part of the museum complex. It is part of the historic center of Saint Petersburg, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1990. The palace faces significant preservation challenges due to the massive volume of visitors, the unstable swampy ground upon which it was built, and the moisture from its position directly on the River Neva. The official website for visiting information is http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage.