How a hollow shell was reborn from the ashes of war

Design · Published 30 September 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In the wake of the Siege of Leningrad, the Catherine Palace was left as nothing more than a hollow shell. Yet, through meticulous documentation and architectural devotion, this Russian masterpiece was painstakingly reconstructed from the ruins of intentional destruction.

The Catherine Palace, located in Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg, has undergone a dramatic evolution of style and scale. Originally a wooden house, it was replaced in 1723 by Catherine I's Stone Palace, a two-storey building designed by Johann Friedrich Braunstein. However, the palace's most iconic identity emerged during the mid-18th century. Under Empress Elizabeth, architects like Mikhail Zemtsov and Andrei Kvasov expanded the structure to a massive 300 meters in length, featuring galleries and hanging gardens.

The palace's most famous aesthetic period arrived between 1751 and 1756 under Bartolomeo Rastrelli. His reconstruction effort integrated various buildings into a cohesive Baroque masterpiece characterized by sky-blue walls, snow-white columns, and gilded stucco. The scale of this opulence was immense, requiring nearly 100 kg of gold for sculptures and ornamentation. Rastrelli's work included the Great Hall, an 860-square-meter space used for grand receptions, and the famous 'Golden Enfilade' of formal rooms.

The architectural narrative shifted again in the 1770s as Neoclassicism replaced Baroque tastes. During the reign of Catherine the Great, architects like Charles Cameron introduced diverse influences, from the 'Greek-Roman rhapsody' of the Thermae to the Chinoiserie of the Chinese Room. This era saw the use of exotic materials like Lake Baikal lapis lazuli and Wedgwood jasper.

Despite the devastation of World War II, when retreating German forces intentionally destroyed the residence, the palace was rebuilt. Starting in 1957, under the direction of Alexander Kedrinsky, Soviet archivists used pre-war documentation to restore the palace to its former glory, preserving its status as a vital component of the Saint Petersburg World Heritage Site.

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