In 1741, Empress Elizabeth, who had just ascended the throne, issued a decree on the construction of the Anichkov Palace. Petersburg expanded rapidly. The project of a multi-storey building in the shape of an elongated letter “H” was created by the new architect of the northern capital, Mikhail Zemtsov, and the famous architect B. Rastrelli completed the grandiose construction in the Baroque style.
In those distant times, the Fontanka was the outskirts of the city, and on the site of the modern Nevsky Prospekt there was a clearing. According to the author of the project, the Anichkov Palace was supposed to be the decoration of the entrance to the city. A canal was dug to it from the Fontanka itself, which ended with a small harbor. The built palace, a bit reminiscent of Peterhof, Elizabeth donated to her favorite Razumovsky. Later, the building was repeatedly donated, mostly the palace was a wedding gift. After Catherine II came to power, she bought the Anichkov Palace from Razumovsky's relatives and presentedhis Grigory Potemkin. In addition, the favorite was donated one hundred thousand rubles for the reconstruction of the palace according to his own taste. As a result, in two years the architect I. E. Starov rebuilt the building in the style of classicism. The multi-storey structure characteristic of the Baroque disappeared, the magnificent stucco molding was destroyed, the harbor was filled up. As a result, the Anichkov Palace became more strict and cold.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the building was bought out to the treasury, and for a short time the Emperor's Study was located in it. Later, a separate room was built for him by the architect Quarenghi. Alexander the First gave the Anichkov Palace for the wedding to his own sister, the Grand Duchess, dearly beloved by him Ekaterina Pavlovna, who became the wife of Prince George of Ordenburg.
In 1817, the future Emperor Nicholas I settled in the palace. During his reign, the architect Rossi changed the interiors of some of the halls of the palace. When Nicholas moved to the Winter Palace, he came to the Anichkov Palace during Lent, and luxurious court balls were regularly held here.
There are monuments without which it is difficult to imagine Petersburg. Anichkov Palace has always been a decoration of the northern capital. It is closely connected with the life of the great people of Russia.
In 1837, after a severe fire in the Winter Palace, the august family of Nicholas I lived for some time in the famous palace. The emperor's son Alexander was also brought up here, one of whose teachers was the greatest Russian poet Vasily Zhukovsky. He was provided with separateapartments.
After the revolution of 1917, the Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg was a museum of the city's history for a short time. In 1937, the Palace of Pioneers was opened here. But the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War made its own adjustments to the history of the legendary palace. On October 1, 1941, a surgical hospital was opened in this historic building, in which thousands of lives of the heroic defenders of besieged Leningrad were saved during its existence. In the spring of 1942, the hospital was transferred, and in May the Palace of Pioneers began to work here again.
