Yelagin Palace

The name of the architect who built a house in the Palladian style for I.P. Elagin is reliably unknown. Some historians suggest the authorship of J. Quarenghi . The original appearance of the villa on the islands has not been preserved.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the island was bought by Alexander I for his mother, Empress Maria Fedorovna , who was already having a hard time traveling to the royal suburban residences of Pavlovsk and Gatchina . The famous architect K. Rossi was entrusted with rebuilding the Elagin Palace. The architect erected several buildings on the island at once: in addition to the three-story palace crowned with a dome, three additional pavilions were built there, as well as the Kitchen and Konyushenny buildings.

The most famous sculptors of the time, S. S. Pimenov and V. I. Demut-Malinovsky , and decorators, D. B. Scotty , A. Vigi and B. Medici, were involved in the interior design of the palace and pavilions.

The oval hall of the palace was decorated with caryatids and ionic half-columns, the dome was painted with bizarre ornaments, and the walls in most of the rooms of the palace were lined with artificial marble (stucco). In one of the rooms, a pure-white color was used that looked very much like porcelain, which is why the room was called the Porcelain Study. The artists painted marble walls of other rooms with flowers, ornaments and scenes from ancient mythology, and on the ceilings depicted groups of frolicking cupids.

Especially admiring the Dowager Empress and her guests were the doors on the first floor of the Elagin Palace, the design of which was done by Rossi himself. Each of the twenty-odd doors is a true work of art: the doors are lined with precious woods with thin gilded carvings. The door of the cabinet of Alexander I on the second floor was decorated with bronze decorations.

After the death of Maria Fyodorovna Elagin, the palace gradually turned into a “reserve” royal residence, which the emperors did not too much care for their attention. At the beginning of the 20th century, Elagin Palace was “lowered” in rank - from a royal residence, it turned into a resting place for the prime ministers of Russia. S. Yu. Witte , P. A. Stolypin , V. N. Kokovtsov and I. L. Goremykin managed to visit it.

After the revolution, Yelagin Palace received the status of a museum - the Museum of Life was opened in it. There were a lot of similar museums in St. Petersburg at the beginning of the century, but soon most of them were closed or turned into other cultural or public institutions. This happened with Yelagin Palace, in which a cultural and educational center was organized.

During the Great Patriotic War, the palace was badly destroyed - one of the shells that fell into the chimney led to a fire. Immediately after the victory, the architect V. M. Savkov began preparing the palace for restoration, collecting together the surviving pieces of marble and fragments of stucco decorations and murals. Based on these fragments and sketches, the interior decoration of the Elagin Palace was subsequently restored.

Restored under the direction of architect M. M. Plotnikov , Elagin Palace again became a museum, which housed collections of art glass and porcelain, as well as embroidery and wood and metal products. At the beginning of perestroika , when the Museum of Leningrad Art Glass was closed, the collection of its exhibits was also transferred to the Elaginoostrovsky Museum.

Today, the Yelagin Palace also hosts various temporary exhibitions of works of art and organizes entertainment events in the style of different eras - Peter's, Elizabethan or Catherine’s. In front of the Elagin Palace, on the territory of the Central Park of Culture and Leisure (TsPKiO), tourists organize picnics and receptions in the open air and other modern attractions.

• At the very beginning of the film “ Heavenly Slow-moving ” (1945), you can see the ruined Yelagin Palace - this is how it looked in 1945 before the start of all restoration work.
• This palace was captured in the scenes of the short-length musical television movie “ No Sadness ” (1985).
• In the series “ Master and Margarita ” (2005), the palace is shown under the guise of a psychiatric clinic by Professor Stravinsky, where Ivan Bezdomny and the Master are kept.
• In the series “ Kurt Seit and Alexandra ” (2014), the palace is shown as the Borinsky estate.

• Central Park of Culture and Rest named after S. M. Kirov

• Pilyavsky V.I., Architect of Russia. M.-L.: GIAiG, 1951

• Elagin Palace on the Rusarh.ru website.
• Spherical panorama of the sculpture "Dancing Girls" in Elagin Park.