Catherine the Great

Soon after the death of Elizabeth in 1762, a Palace revolution brought Catherine II to the throne, which she held for a reign of 34 years. Unlike her husband, she was well loved by the country's elite and received a very good press in Europe thanks to her contacts with many figures of the French Enlightenment. Catherine's court was extremely luxurious. She was the first to move into the newly built Winter Palace.

The foundation stone of the building had been laid in the reign of Peter I. The place was dubbed the 'hermitage' since the new Empress preferred to receive her most intimate friends there in dose privacy. Even the servants were to be made invisible, and meals were served from a distance by service lift.

Catherine started a royal art collection which later became the world-famous Hermitage. Several additional buildings (the Minor Hermitage and the Old Hermitage) were commissioned for the growing royal collection of art. The Hermitage Theater was built and the area around the palace was put in order and complemented with the finest houses and palaces. The classical style of building now introduced by leading Russian and foreign architects gave Petersburg a more 'modern' look than the baroque style previously favored. The 'Commission for Construction in Masonry for St Petersburg and Moscow' laid down the dimensions for the public squares and the planning requirements for the principal streets. No roofline was to exceed that of the Winter Palace. The banks of the Neva were to be replaced by granite facing.. The Peter 8 Paul citadel was now cased in granite. Grand facades fronted the Neva. The most prominent timber-lined embankments on the left bank of the Neva river were upgraded to their present red granite look, steps were to be built down to the water, and attractive bridges were to span the Fontanka and other waterways. The marvelous wrought iron fence of the Summer Gardens was built by Yuri Felten in 1773-86.

Grand palaces were put up in this area for Catherine's favorites. The Marble Palace was granted to Grigori Orlov, while another went to Grigori Potemkin, named the Tauride Palace, from the ancient name for the Crimea, which he had conquered for his sovereign. It was rumored that Potemkin had once pledged and lost his palace at cards, and that the empress redeemed it and gave it back to him. In the environs of Petersburg, meanwhile, Catherine�s chosen architect, the Scotsman Charles Cameron, was building a huge palace at Pavlovsk for the empress's heir, Paul and, in the same time, improving maestro Rastrelli's imperial village' at Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). Several additions to the royal palace were built. One of these new wings (the Cameron Gallery) served as the living quarters for Catherine the Great herself. The lovely park which surrounds the palaces still bears the mark of Catherine's lively and luxurious court.

Under Catherine's patronage the arts, science and trade have flourished. The Academy of Fine Arts was built beside the quay at the upriver end of Vassilyevski Island. Its circular central hall, which can be glimpsed through the windows of the splendid vestibule, is as wide as the dome of St Peters in Rome. The ancient Egyptian sphinxes outside the Academy were installed in the mid-nineteenth century. New buildings for the Russian Academy of Sciences and the first Public Library (now the Russian National Library) were constructed. Many educational institutions were established. The annexation of Courland in 1795 extended Russia's Baltic coast to the frontier of Prussia, making the two powers neighbors. German-born Catherine, the 'most truly Russian of all tsarist�s', had brought the heart of Europe closer to Russia than ever before. The Smolny Institute - a boarding school for young ladies of the nobility, founded by Catherine the Great near the bend of the Neva - dates from this period, as do the Palace of Commerce (Gostinyi Dvor), a vast trading complex on Vassilyevski Island, the jewelers' "Silver Lane', the Catholic, Lutheran and Armenian churches, the house of St Anne's German school, and, in the suburbs, an ever-increasing number of factories and workshops. With all this, Catherine II sought to show herself a worthy successor of Peter the Great, whom she addressed in the Latin inscription on the plinth of his 'iron horseman' monument with the words 'Petro primo Catharina secunda - from Catherine the Second to Peter the First'. This powerful monument reminded some of the terrors the Russian people had suffered under Peter the Great, while others saw in it an expression of the supreme will of a genius.

Among Catherine's many reforms was the reform of St. Petersburg's local administration. In 1766 the position of Mayor "gorodskoi golova" was established. In 1774 the Magistrate (Municipal Council) was formed, and in 1786 it was transformed into the City Duma.

A monument to Catherine the Great was built in 1873 in a garden just off Nevsky Prospect (by the Public Library and the Alexandrinsky Theatre). Thousands of people come to visit her tomb in St. Peter's and Paul's Cathedral.

Paul I to Nicholas I - more order in the city

When Catherine the Great died in 1796, an entirely new period in Russian history has started. Catherine's son Paul I has introduced some ultra-conservative policies, curtailed St. Petersburg's local administration and made several major steps towards turning Russia into a bureaucratic state. These were some of the many acts Paul I committed out of hatred for his mother and her favorites. He converted the Tauride Palace into stables for a regiment of the Guards, so that the costly interiors were soon ruined. The sumptuous Summer Palace was replaced by a castle - because in a dream the Tsar had received the Archangel Michael's command to do so. The worst fear in Paul's life was the fear of being assassinated.

Trying to hide from possible plots, he built a well-protected palace for himself, called the Mikhailovsky Castle. However, that did not help, and on March 12, 1801 Paul I was assassinated in the newly-built castle, in his own bedroom. Ironically, the coup was engineered by his son Alexander, who had sworn to continue the policies of his grandmother, Catherine the Great. Upon assuming power Alexander I had introduced a series of reforms. The poet Pushkin would later speak of the �glorious days� of Alexander's accession. A political reform brought to life a new government structure: in 1802 Alexander approved a system of ministries with ministers reporting directly to the monarch; in 1810 the State Council was formed. For better or for worse, bureaucracy flourished. Soon St. Petersburg became a very bureaucratic city and its traditional regular street layout and heavy policing just contributed to such an image.

During the reign of Alexander I the Russian army has successfully stopped Napoleon's invasion of Russia and drove the French army back to Paris (1812-14). The captured French banners were put in the newly built Kazan Cathedral, where the Russian Army Commander, Field-Marshall Kutuzov, had been buried in 1813. After many disasters Russia eventually triumphed and at the ensuing Congress of Vienna (1814-15) Alexander I took part as the most powerful player. Russia's increased influence in Europe was reflected in the further development of St. Petersburg. In the Russian Imperial capital everything had to look very orderly. It was the heyday of architectural ensembles and perfectionist "classical" designs. The Admiralty, the naval headquarters of Russia, was remodeled and enlarged in 1806-23. The complex of the richly ornamented Stock Exchange and the Rostral Columns were built on the Southern edge ("Strelka") of Vasilyevski Island. Arts Square with the Mikhailovsky Palace (1819-25) was designed by Carlo Rossi, who was the master architect of this period. The immense General Staff building on the Palace Square, the Dramatic Theatre, the Senate and the Holy Synod buildings are Rossi�s most impressive works. He was also responsible for the Heroes of 1812 gallery in the Winter Palace. In 1818 the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral began but was completed only 40 years later.

When Alexander I suddenly died in the town of Taganrog (some say, he ran away to Siberia to escape the heavy burden of power) in December 1825, a political crisis erupted. A group of liberal young army officers (later called the "Decembrists") started a revolt against Tsarist absolutism, hoping that Nicholas I, Alexander's younger brother, would agree to sign a Constitution for the country. They brought their soldiers to the Senate Square by the Bronze Horseman, but remained inactive. The uprising was cruelly crushed, the five organizers were executed and the rest exiled to Siberia. Due to the Decembrist Uprising the new Emperor, Nicholas I, adopted the most conservative policies. He turned the clock back, even reintroducing serfdom, and stultified the social and economic progress of Russia. Thus, Russia remained an economically backward bureaucratic state. That was well-reflected in the Imperial capital, St. Petersburg. The desire for orderliness reached ridiculous heights.

The orderly appearance of a marching army was Nicholas's ideal. Military order was everywhere. Even civil educational institutions (colleges) were treated as military schools. Paradoxically, culture flourished under such an oppressive regime. Alexander Pushkin wrote some of his best poetry, before being killed in a duel in 1837. Mikhail Glinka, one of the first great Russian composers, wrote his best operas and chamber music. Feodor Dostoyevsky lived in St. Petersburg starting from 1837 and in 1844 started his career as a writer.

Nicolas I died in 1855. His death of was attributed to his grief at Russia's setbacks in the Crimean War, the most humiliating of which was the sight of the British fleet in the Gulf of Finland from the balcony of his seaside residence at Peterhof.

Despite obvious economic backwardness, which eventually resulted in a shameful defeat in the Crimean War (1853-56), Russia, nevertheless, was gradually moving down the road of technical progress. In 1837 the first Russian railroad has opened. It connected St. Petersburg with the royal residence of Tsarskoye Selo (modern-day Pushkin). In 1851 another railroad connected St. Petersburg with Moscow. In 1850 the first permanent bridge across the Neva River was opened. Before that there were only temporary (pontoon) bridges which could not operate in the winter. St. Petersburg was becoming more and more majestic. The ensemble of Palace Square was completed with the construction of the General Staff building (1819-29), Alexander's Column (1830-34) and the Royal Guards Staff building (1837-43). In 1839-44 the Mariinsky Palace (nowadays the City Hall) was built for Nicholas' beloved daughter Maria. St. Isaac's Cathedral (designed by Montferrand), the main temple of the Russian Empire was finally completed in 1858, when Nicholas I had already died and his son Alexander II was on the throne. This Magnificent masterpiece of architecture commemorates the patron Saint of Peter the Great, born on St. Isaac's day, and was at the time one of the largest structures in the city (now - fourth largest cathedral in the world).