🖼 Yelagin Palace

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Rossi's white-and-yellow Empire palace with a semicircular facade on Yelagin Island.

The first house for Ivan Yelagin, in the Palladian style, was built by an unknown architect — Quarenghi is suspected.
Alexander I bought the island for his mother Maria Feodorovna and in 1818 commissioned Carlo Rossi to rebuild it.
The palace was nicknamed the “palace of doors”: twenty-odd carved and gilded doors, and none repeats.
The white stucco in one of the rooms looks so much like porcelain that the room was named the Porcelain Cabinet.
In the early 20th century the palace served as a retreat for prime ministers — Witte and Stolypin stayed here.
In the war a shell hit a chimney and started a fire; by 1960 the interiors were restored from the surviving fragments.
Since 1987 the palace has housed the Museum of Russian Decorative and Applied Art and Interiors.