Anichkov Palace
The Anitschkow Palace ( Russian Аничков дворец ) is a palace dating from 1754 in Saint Petersburg ( Russia). The building is located on Nevsky Prospekt, immediately west of its junction with the Embankment of Fontanka (House 39). Originally a baroque palace, it was the end of the 18th century, its present classical forms.
1741 Empress Elisabeth decreed the construction of a palace, which was to serve as one of the city residences of the Romanov House, on the formerly unoccupied land on the south side of the Nevsky perspective road west of the Fontanka. Begun shortly thereafter took a total of up to 1754th The design came from the city architect Mikhail Zemtsov after this, however, died in 1743, put the Baroque court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli continued the construction work, which he modified the original design somewhat. When completed, the representative palace had a stone boundary wall of the side of the road perspective, and on the side of the river there were both the ceremonial entrance as well as its own Anliegestelle for boats. The still existing name of the palace was chosen based on the Anitschkow bridge, that bridge the Nevsky Prospect, therefore, which spans the Fontanka in the immediate vicinity of the palace.
From 1757, the palace belonged to Count Alexei Grigoryevich Razumovsky, and two decades later Empress Catherine II gave the Anitschkow Palais her partner Count Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin. A little later led the neo-classical architect Ivan Starov on behalf Potjomkins the rebuilding of the Palace in its present forms by. Among other things, the boat harbor on the Fontanka and the previously very solemn Baroque appearance of the facades disappeared has been greatly simplified. The two crowned with domes Dachrisalite that the palace gave an H- shape in plan, were partially dismantled, in one of them directed to a house church, which was, however, also dissolved in the 20th century. Instead, its characteristic ionic colonnade received the Palais during reconstruction by Starov on the facades.
After Potjomkins death, the palace went back to the court and was from 1793 onwards officially known as imperial residence. Further reforms of the building there was 1809-12, when Luigi Rusca redesigned some of the interiors, and 1817-20 to a design by Carlo Rossi, who also built the two Hofpavillons the same time. 1803-05 Giacomo Quarenghi built on the forecourt to Moika Embankment with the Cabinet of His Imperial Majesty, another classical building from the ensemble of Anitschkow Palais.
The palace remained until the February Revolution of 1917 in the possession of the Romanov House, lived among other things there from 1866 Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich, the. , Even after his enthronement as Alexander III the Anitschkow Palais as a residential residence preferred. His son Nikolai Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Nicholas II, his early years were spent also in Anitschkow Palais.
1918, the building complex was nationalized and housed thereafter until the mid- 1930s, the City Museum of Leningrad. 1937 here eventually became the Palace of the Lenin Pioneers, an ideological children's leisure center, furnished. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former palace of the pioneers profiled in 1990 in the Palace of the creativity of young people around. This important leisure center, which includes a number of youth facilities and also a school, is still located in Anitschkow Palais.