300 Years To The First Palace And Park Ensemble In The Vicinity Of St. Petersburg, Happy Anniversary, Oranienbaum! - 3

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

The first suburban palace and park ensemble in the vicinity of St. Petersburg is celebrating 300 years

Catherine the Great died on November 6 (17), 1796, and the new Emperor Paul I, by special decree, transfers Oranienbaum to the ownership of his eldest son and heir to the throne, Alexander Pavlovich.

Already in the last years of the empress's life, she began to lose interest in Oranienbaum. True, in 1780, by a special decree, the “palace settlement of Oranienbaum” was renamed a city. But Paul, who hated his mother and everything that was connected with her, transfers him to the rank of a supernumerary. And only Alexander I, who came to power in 1802, returns the status of a district town to the city. In 1792, all the decorations from the Chinese Palace were taken to the Tauride Palace and the Hermitage. In 1793, most of the earthen fortifications of Petershtadt were demolished, and in 1798, already under Alexander Pavlovich, his dilapidated wooden buildings, including the garden pavilions, were sold for scrap.

Now, of all the numerous buildings of Petershtadt, we can only see the Palace of Peter III and the Honorary Gate, and to the south of the palace there are remnants of ramparts and ditches. The Lower Park of the Menshikov Palace is also losing its regular appearance - old trees and bushes are no longer trimmed, and they grow freely. In 1801, in connection with an emergency condition, the skiing on the Roller Coaster stopped, and in 1813 both the coaster and its colonnade collapsed. Only the stone pavilion has survived. The ruins remained in the same place until the end of the 1850s, when they were finally dismantled. The magazine "Illustration" for 1847 provides such a description - the place "… where the slope passed, was overgrown with small bushes and … timid hares chose it as their refuge." The park is overgrown, its unique layout is gradually being lost.

After the mysterious death of Alexander I in Taganrog, Oranienbaum was taken over by the Grand Dukes Konstantin and Mikhail Pavlovich. The estate is being put in order. The grand-ducal family invites to work in Oranienbaum the famous gardener Joseph Bush Jr., the author of the park on Elagin Island, to work in Oranienbaum. In 1830, Busch began to remodel the abandoned Italian park of Petershtadt in a romantic landscape style, expanding it south along the banks of the Karosta. Nothing remains of the "Italian" Rinaldi Park. The dams and wooden sluices of the ponds turn into cascades of granite steps, picturesque “chaos” of boulders appear at their foot, and the river bed is decorated with “wild” boulders. Instead of regular alleys lined with regular rows of trees, landscape paths appear in the park among open meadows and groves. There are granite bridges across the Karosta - the three-arch "Petrovsky" and the small "Ruinny", corresponding to the romantic tastes of the 19th century.

The high hilly banks of the river, overgrown with pine trees, gave rise to the name "Russian Switzerland", which was assigned to this area of the park. Even the city street in this part of Oranienbaum received the name "Swiss". Then the landscape park is split between Petershtadt and the Own dacha, now they are connected by the Rowan Alley, also designed in a landscape style. A small hill not far from it is all that remains of the Yekaterinburg fortress. The Own Dacha park is also being reconstructed - in the western part, where Rinaldi planned a spiral pond, a new English road is being laid, connecting the area of the Chinese Palace with the Katalnaya Gorka pavilion. Another landscape plot with birch groves, forest edges and meadows is being created around it. The star-shaped layout of the alleys in the eastern part of the park is disappearing.

The area of the Chinese Palace also acquires a more landscape character; in the 70s, a pergola appeared on the bank of the pond, overgrown with wild grapes. At the same time, ornamental parterre flower beds decorated with decorative park sculpture are being set up near the palaces and park buildings. Architectural monuments are also being rebuilt - the layout of the Grand Palace is changed, and in 1852 the Chinese Palace was also rebuilt by architects L. L. Bonsted and A. I. Shtakenschneider. Bush connects together the previously scattered parts of Oranienbaum Park, gives it a stylistic integrity, but the unique layout of Rinaldi, unfortunately, is largely lost.

The Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, the wife of Mikhail Pavlovich, did a lot for the revival of the Oranienbaum estate, and she became her property in 1843 after her husband's death. She was an amazing woman, she was interested in both art and science, supported artists, writers, musicians, organized art salons, musical evenings, and at the same time actively participated in the preparation and implementation of the agrarian reform, was engaged in improving the system of medical education. It was under Elena Pavlovna that the abandoned park was mainly restored. In Oranienbaum Elena Pavlovna hosted musical evenings and concerts, the composer A. G. Rubinstein, the violinist L. S. Auer, the count and writer V. A. Sollogub, the writer, musicologist and journalist Prince V. F. Odoevsky, the surgeon N. Pirogov, scientist-travelers P. P. Semenov Tyan-Shansky and N. N. Miklukho Maclay.

The last owners of Oranienbaum (since 1874) are the daughter of Mikhail Pavlovich and Elena Pavlovna - Ekaterina Mikhailovna, who married Duke George August of Mecklenburg-Strelitzky and her children Elena, Mikhail and Georgy. They continued the musical traditions of Elena Pavlovna's salons. Georgy Georgievich created a string quartet of chamber music "Quartet of Mecklenburg", which then gave almost eight hundred concerts in 46 Russian and 88 European cities. Since the second half of the 19th century, the outskirts of Oranienbaum have become a favorite summer vacation spot for the creative elite of St. Petersburg. Here the dachas of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and N. A. Nekrasov were filmed, to whose dacha I. S. Turgenev, N. A. Dobrolyubov, L. N. Tolstoy, A. K. Tolstoy, Alexander Dumas came. Artists I. I. Shishkin, I. E. Repin, A. K. Savrasov came to work on the estate of Countess Mordvinova near Oranienbaum. Here in 1867, in the garden near the Oranienbaum railway station, a summer theater was opened, which was considered the best of the suburban theaters. A. I. Kachalov, F. I. Shalyapin, V. K. Komissarzhevskaya, M. N. Ermolova performed in it, Tamara Karsavina and Anna Pavlova danced, L. V. Sobinov gave concerts …

Oranienbaum becomes a recognized center of summer countryside life. And in 1882, the future great musician and composer Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum.

After 1917, many difficulties fell to the lot of Oranienbaum. In the middle of 1918, the Grand Palace confiscated from the Mecklenburg-Strelitzkys was taken under protection by the newly formed Department for the Protection of Antiquities, and in 1923 the Oranienbaum Park was transferred to the Peterhof Museum Administration. But much had already disappeared by this time, and later the priceless exhibits were transported in whole carts from the palaces, including to Peterhof. So, in 1926-28, all garden sculptures of the Upper and Lower parks were taken there.

But during the Great Patriotic War, Oranienbaum suffered less than all other suburban palaces, since it remained not captured by the Nazi troops. Here, under the cover of the guns of Kronstadt, our troops held the entire blockade "small land" - the Oranienbaum bridgehead - 25 km from north to south and 60 km from west to east along the bay. Immediately after the war, very significant funds were allocated for restoration work, and already in 1946 the Upper Park and the Chinese Palace were opened for visitors, in 1953 - the palace of Peter III, and in 1959 - the Pavilion of the Roller Coaster. Unfortunately, the Grand Palace belonged to a military organization for a long time and was not available for visiting. But the fact that the palaces and the park were preserved, oddly enough, played a negative role. Later, the main funds were invested in the restoration of Pushkin, Peterhof,then Gatchina, and Oranienbaum remained forgotten.

The last years have become especially sad, when almost all wonderful palaces and pavilions were closed due to emergency conditions. Due to leaks in the Chinese Palace, the unique panels of the Glass Bead Cabinet almost died. And this is after in 1990 the artistic monuments of Oranienbaum were included by UNESCO in the List of World Cultural Heritage of Humanity! Now, in connection with the anniversary date, they remembered about Oranienbaum again. Restoration work is underway in the park and palaces. Glass-bead panels have been rescued and restored (they were recently exhibited in the Hermitage). Patterned flower beds and bosquets of the Lower Garden have been restored. Let's hope that after the completion of all the work, the Oranienbaum palace and park ensemble will shine with new colors,will return the lost beauty and again take its well-deserved place in the suburban palace necklace of St. Petersburg. He deserves it!