Petroff (Petrovsky) Palace (Moscow)

 palace, museum, interesting place, 1770s construction, object of cultural heritage of federal importance (Russia)

www.petroffpalace.mos.ru/en/

Originally an Imperial palace built by Catherine the Great as a resting stop to the Kremlin, today a luxury hotel with 43 rooms and numerous enormous ballrooms.

Petroff, or Petrovsky Palace or Castle (Петровский подъездной дворец, "St.Peter's Arrival Palace") was begun in 1776 and officially completed November 3, 1780 (though it is likely that construction continued for a few years afterwards). This palace was intended to be the last overnight station of royal journeys from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Catherine visited once, in 1785; Paul I abandoned it; Napoleon burned it down. The palace was restored in the 1830s and again in 1874 with minor alterations.

The red-brick castle with white detail originally had two royal apartments on the first floor and plenty of service space on the ground floor. They all converge on a central rotunda hall. The descriptor of "Gothic" is not exactly appropriate here, since Kazakov borrows heavily from Naryshkin Baroque and earlier Russian themes like the oversized bottle-shaped pillars by the main entrance.

The building remained a royal hotel until 1918, but also housed a variety of non-royal residents; Lermontov used to stay in the castle at his friends' apartment. Starting in 1920, the palace housed Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, which vacated the site in the 1990s.

The palace was elaborately restored from 1999-2010, when it reopened as a luxury hotel.

Yandex panorama: yandex.ru/maps/-/CCU5B2QP3D