Nikolai Palace
The Nikolai Palace , also Nikolaevsky Palace ( Russian Николаевский дворец ) is one of several palaces in the classical style in Saint Petersburg .
The palace was commissioned by the Russian Tsar Nicholas I in 1855 and designed by Andrei Stackenschneider , Russia's most famous architect of the time. The palace was a wedding present for his son Grand Duke Nikolai Romanow and his bride Princess Alexandra von Oldenburg . After the birth of her second child (1864), the marriage was broken and her husband took a mistress , the ballerina Ekaterina Tschislowa . In their city palace, the couple lived in different wings so that they hardly saw each other. During the Russian Civil War (1917–1920) the Nikolai Palace was used as a military headquarters . In the 1920s the building belonged to an agricultural college, after which it was converted into a museum. During the siege of Leningrad in World War II , the palace was massively damaged as a result of heavy German bombing raids on the city and was restored again in the late 1940s.
Nicholas Palace around 1861
Side view, 2010
General view, 2013
Web links
Coordinates: 59 ° 55 ′ 56.7 " N , 30 ° 17 ′ 34.7" E