Kadriorg Palace

The ensemble is centred on an 18th-century palace block with matching side pavilions and an attached formal park laid out on two levels. The palace complex was built in stone with carved decorative details and extensive stucco work, and the plan reflects late-baroque ideas that combine a showy main building with symmetrical flanking wings. The side pavilions were roofed with tiles by the autumn of 1719 and their interior finishes were completed by spring 1721. The main range rose from 1720 and was roofed in 1721, while significant interior fittings remained being worked on into the mid-1720s. Much of the palace exterior and the principal reception spaces survive, and the shell and core were restored during a major program in the 1990s.

The great audience hall is a standout interior. It preserves abundant stucco ornament and the initials or monogram of Catherine I set into the ceiling scheme. The main ceiling composition also contains a painted plafon depicting Diana and Actaeon. Carved stone capitals and other façade details were cut from hewn stone, and specialised craftsmen executed the stucco and stone finishing. These decorative elements have been conserved and form a central feature of the restored palace interiors.

A small, locally remembered feature remains visible in the north wing. Three bricks in a corner pilaster were left unplastered and can still be seen. Local tradition connects these exposed bricks with Peter I and they have long been pointed out as an anecdotal trace of the tsar’s personal involvement on the site.

The surrounding park combines a formal baroque layout near the palace with more natural wooded areas beyond. A Lower Garden faces toward the city, and a two-terraced Upper Garden spreads across the Lasnamäe plateau behind the palace. The original planting scheme favoured clipped trees and shrubs, geometric flowerbeds and symmetrically placed pools and fountains. Ponds were dug at the time of foundation both for visual effect and to improve drainage. Named water features include a pond in the Mariin orphanage yard, a pond north of the modern Kadri road, an Upper pond between the palace and the Peter I house, and a Lower Swan pond in the park’s western reaches. The Upper pond and the historic fountains and cascades were fed mainly from Lake Ülemiste, while the Lower pond received spring water through an underground drain. The Upper pond once contained a small islet faced with flagstone.

Beyond the formal gardens a forested park area preserves an oak grove and many mature trees. The grounds host more than seventy species of woody plants and the park covers about seventy-two hectares. Garden structures recorded across the site include greenhouses or orangeries once used for exotic plants, a watch or guard house, kitchen and service buildings, a guest house and a garden pavilion. Some service buildings were restored or reconstructed in the 1990s restoration program. A one-storey house with a small tower built around 1780 later accommodated a chintz manufactory and other uses. In the seaside part of the park stands a monument to the Russian ironclad Rusalka, dated 1902, which is entered as an object of artistic and historic value. The Children’s Park pavilion is entered in the State Register of Cultural Monuments. Later additions to the grounds include the 1937–1938 administrative Chancellery building sited on the Upper pond axis and a Japanese garden opened on 31 July 2011, designed by a Kyoto landscape designer. Many of the buildings and garden features visible today were conserved or rebuilt during restoration work carried out between 1991 and 2000.