New Michael Palace

The palace occupies a large near-square plot along the Palace Embankment and stretches from the Neva to the Moika. The main residence stands apart from its service ranges by an inner courtyard, and a separate Equerry Wing faces Millionnaya Street. The overall plan combines a river-front ceremonial front with ancillary buildings grouped behind it, forming a compact urban service quarter that included carriage and stable courts.

The river-facing façade is organized around three projecting sections, risalits (projecting sections of the wall), each topped by a triangular pediment, with a broad entablature and balustrade above. Carrara marble was applied on the principal river front, and terracotta figures decorate the elevations. Third-floor projections are enriched with caryatids (sculpted female figures used as supports) and display a grand-ducal coat of arms and monograms framed by female figures and laurel wreaths.

Brick walls carry vaulted spaces and threaded beams, while wooden and iron joists serve intermediate floors. Metal rafters and iron beams were used in roof structures, a technique new for the city at the time. The building was provided with indoor plumbing and a heated-air heating system from the start, reflecting mid-19th century technical advances in urban palace construction.

The central entrance on the river front is set beneath a triple traceried canopy with wrought-iron grilles and twisted supporting columns fitted with lanterns. Service ranges include a carriage house, smithy and stables; a riding hall was added in 1877. Converted and adapted houses accommodated servants, among them a named Zubova house, and the Reserve Palace and the Stable Court are recorded as parts of the service quarter at Millionnaya Street and the Moika embankment. The Equerry Wing presents a curving façade that derives from an earlier mid-18th century Baroque palace on the same site, and some courtyard buildings were altered or raised during the 19th century.

Interior arrangement places the grand public and private rooms on distinct levels. The ground floor contains a large reception vestibule framed by eight grey-granite columns and eighteen pilasters, and a broad marble stair leads upward with one stair wall partly glazed to overlook a winter garden. Private apartments such as a boudoir, bathroom and study opened from the lower circulation spaces, and a sunken pool room lined with pink artificial marble and green marble details is recorded on this level. The main state floor above contains a sequence of reception rooms named for their colour schemes, an oak dining room with a tall carved-oak fireplace, and double-height banquet and dance halls that are ringed by two tiers of white fluted Corinthian columns (Corinthian columns are classical columns with richly carved tops).

The house church of the Archangel Michael sat in the central third-floor position and was externally marked by a single gilded cupola, the building’s highest point. Internally it featured Russian-style painted decoration described as golden arabesques on a blue background, and the church’s iconostasis and plafond designs were prepared by noted decorators of the period.