Grand Kremlin Palace
Paul I, who ascended to the throne in November 1796, dismissed most of his mother's statesmen but retained Bezborodko in charge of foreign affairs. Paul extended the favor to Lvov and granted him state support and new commissions, although nowhere as significant or lucrative as those awarded to Vincenzo Brenna (Khodasevich: "Even under new order Lvov was swimming along like a fish in water"). In an ironic twist of fortune, in April 1797 Paul I dispatched Lvov to Moscow to redesign Bartolomeo Rastrelli's modest Grand Kremlin Palace, a feat once attempted by Vasili Bazhenov. Lvov produced a vast plan consisting of a three-part neoclassical palace core within a redesigned Gothic revival citadel, "an intimate royal villa in a park-like setting." His design was not as radical as Bazhenov's 1767 draft that was cancelled by Catherine at an early stage, but shared the same fate. After one year of preliminary work the project was cancelled; all alterations to existing Kremlin buildings done by Lvov were later absorbed into extant Grand Kremlin Palace designed by Konstantin Thon.