page_title: Catherine Palace
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Catherine Palace / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Katharinenpalast - Ballsaal: Der Katharinenpalast in Puschkin war einst die russische Zarenresidenz. Das Palais befindet sich im Katharinenpark, ein Landschaftspark. English: Katharinenpalast - Ballsaal: The Katharinenpalast in Pushkin was once the Russian tsar residency. The Palais is located in the Katharinenpark, a landscape park.
context_page_description: The Catherine Palace is a Rococo palace located in the town of Tsarskoye Selo, 30 km south of St. Petersburg, Russia. It was the summer residence of the Russian tsars.
context_section_description: Following the Great Northern War, Russia recovered the farm called Saari Mojs (a high place) or Sarskaya Myza, which resided on a hill 65 m in elevation.  In 1710, Peter the Great gave the estate to his wife Catherine I, the village of which was initially called Sarskoye Selo, and then finally Tsarskoye Selo (Tsar's Village).  In 1723, Catherine I's Stone Palace, designed by Johann Friedrich Braunstein and built by Johann Ferster, replaced the original wooden house.  This was a two-story sixteen-room building, with state chambers finished in polished alabaster, while the upper one included Gobelin tapestry.  The southeast portion of the estate included a garden designed by Jan Roosen, with terraces, stone staircases, parterres, trellised arbours, and ponds, while a menagerie was located on the opposite of the estate.
  During the reign of Peter the Great's daughter, Empress Elizabeth, Mikhail Zemtsov designed a new palace and work began in 1744.  In 1745, Zemtsov's pupil, Andrei Kvasov, working with Savva Chevakinsky, expanded the palace to be 300 m long.  This included a Middle House, two side wings, a chapel, and the Conservatory Hall, all connected by four galleries with hanging gardens. Then in 1751, Bartolomeo Rastrelli undertook a major reconstruction effort, integrating several buildings, giving the palace its distinctive snow-white columns, sky-blue walls, with gilded stucco, chapel cupolas, and sculptures requiring almost 100 kg of gold.  Rastrelli's interiors were based on a Baroque style.  Sculptor Johann Franz Dunker, master gilder Leprince, and interior painter Giuseppe Valeriani were some of the distinguished artists.  Other notable rooms included the Chinese Room with its porcelain and Coromandel lacquer panels, the Portrait Hall, the Light Gallery, and the Amber Room with Andreas Schlüter's amber panels, while 5 anterooms were connected to the Great Hall, which measured 860 square meters.  Construction ended in 1756, when the palace included 40 state apartments, and more than 100 private and service rooms.  A New Garden was added, while the Old Garden was improved with a deepening of the Big Pond, connected to springs 6 km away, the addition of a Toboggan Slide, plus the Hermitage,  Grotto, Island, and Mon Bijou pavilions.
  Baroque architecture gave way to Neoclassical architecture in the 1770s, when Tsarskoye Selo became the summer residence of Catherine the Great's court.  Yuri Velten redesigned the south facade of the palace, while the side wings were converted from one-storey into four-storey Zubov and Chapel Annexes.  The Main Staircase was replaced by state and private rooms such as the Chinese Room, decorated with Charles Cameron designs, and a new staircase built in the center where the Chinese Room had stood. Cameron's 1780s interior designs included the Arabesque Room with arabesque painted ceiling, walls, and doors, while Greek and Roman classical motifs were used on the wall vertical panels.  Cameron's Lyons Room used French golden-yellow silk on the walls, while the doors, stoves and panels used Lake Baikal lapis lazuli.  The empress' Bedroom used Wedgwood jasper bas-reliefs designed by John Flaxman and George Stubbs.  The Blue Room, or "Snuff-box", incorporated white and bright blue glass on the walls.  Giacomo Quarenghi designed the Mirror and Silver Rooms in 1789, while Rastrelli's hanging gardens were pulled down in 1773. 
  Vasily Neyolov's 1768 master plan for Tsarskoye Selo was elaborated in 1771 by Johann Busch and implemented.  Antonio Rinaldi added the Chesme Column, Morea Column, and the Kagul Obelisk to commemorate the victorius Russo-Turkish War (1768-1774).  Neyolov's Gothic monuments included the Admiralty, the Hermitage Kitchen and Red (Turkish) Cascade, and his Chinese motifs included the Creaking Pagoda and the Great Caprice.  Neyolov's Early Classicism monuments included the Upper and Lower Baths.  Neyolov built the Opera House in 1778-79.  In the 1780s, Cameron added the Thermae as part of Catherine the Great's "Greek-Roman rhapsody", and started building the Chinese Village.  
caption: The ballroom
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