One Day Visit To Tsaritsyno Palace In Moscow
Since I had to leave sunny Marbella and come to Moscow for a month to do my interior design work, I decided to take the maximum of this trip and visit all those amazing palaces that we have here. I must say that I had them on my bucket list for quite some time now and was happy to start ticking them off. I think those excursions will be a perfect addition to my History of Styles research, which I didn’t update for a long time.
I started with one of the most famous sightseeing points – Tsaritsyno Palace. It is remarkable not only for the palace itself but for the magnificent park that surrounds it.
The construction of the Great Tsaritsyno Palace started during the reign of Catherine the Great in 1775 by the architect Bazhenov. It consisted of 3 separate buildings in the pseudo-Gothic style. Ten-year works were coming to the end (the palace was almost ready, and the finishing works began), when the unexpected visit of the empress changed everything in a minute. She didn’t like the palace at all: said that the rooms were dark, the ceilings low and the corridors narrow. She finally ordered to demolish the buildings and to suspend Bazhenov from the project.
She then assigned another architect, Matvey Kazakov to finish the construction of the palace. He was the student of Bazhenov and we can only imagine how humiliating this decision was for his teacher. In his project, the grandeur of the palace was supposed to dominate the surrounding landscape. However, in general, Bazhenov’s original layout was preserved. When Kazakov was working on the Grand Palace the fashion for pseudo-Gothic style was fading away and the new building was influenced by new trends coming from Europe – Neo-Classic and Baroque styles.
It took another 10 years to complete the exterior construction and finally, the palace was covered with a temporary roof. But the sudden death of Catherine and the accession of Paul I to the throne changed the plans once again: because of the complex relationship he had with his mother he ordered to freeze all the construction works.
Gradually the palace started to turn into a huge ruin. People stole everything which was possible to steal, the trees were growing on the roof, and finally, only the walls remained… The complete restoration of the Great Palace in Tsaritsyno was done in modern times and was finished only in 2007.
The surrounding park is one of the most beautiful in Moscow. It has numerous pavilions, lakes, artificial grottos, fountains, and pergolas. You can spend hours walking around – it is especially charming in summer when all the fountains are working.
Before the interior works started in the 2000s, there were many enemies of such “restoration” (and I was among them!). They were saying that preservation of original ruins has more historic value than the reconstruction of the interiors which never existed (there were also no remains of the original interior projects of Kazakov or Bazhenov). I mean nobody thinks about reconstruction of Colloseum, right?
The interiors that we see inside the palace now resemble an expensive artificial scenery for movie shooting. However, they look quite grandeur and impressive and I suppose that was the intent:
The atrium of the “Bread House” is now used for performances of local musicians – I had the opportunity to enjoy the concert of classical music while was there.
And by the way, here is how Tsaritsyno looked before reconstruction:
Fascinating, isn’t it?
Interested to learn more about various historic interior styles? Check out my eBook “History of Styles”:
