🏛 Catherine Palace

A huge late 18th-century Neoclassical palace with a colonnade of 16 columns, built for Catherine II.

The palace was built in 1773–1796 for Catherine II on the foundations of Anna Ioannovna's summer palace, Annenhof.
The design was by Prince Pyotr Makulov and Antonio Rinaldi, and Giacomo Quarenghi finished the facades and interiors.
The columns of the loggia on the street facade are of dark grey sandstone, "wild stone".
Paul I disliked the palace and, right after his mother's death, turned it into barracks, with a parade ground laid out in front.
After the destruction of 1812 the building was restored in 1823 for the Cadet Corps.
In Soviet times it housed the Military Academy of Armoured Forces, later the Combined Arms Academy.
In 2025 the palace was handed to the Tropinin Museum, which was renamed the Yekaterininsky museum complex.

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