Peterhof Grand Palace

The palace stands as a long central block with short lateral wings and terminal pavilions, its sea-facing front running 268 metres and finished in a yellow paint with white architectural details. The principal axis of the building aligns with the formal Upper Garden, the Lower Garden and a 400-metre Sea Canal that runs straight to the Gulf of Finland, so that the palace, gardens and waterway form a single engineered composition.

The gardens include an Upper Garden laid out as a parterre (formal garden with patterned beds and low hedges) with ornamental basins, and a Lower Garden dominated by the Grand Cascade, sometimes called the Golden Cascade, with broad steps and terraces. The Lower Garden contains elaborate parterres and numerous fountains, the count of which is given as 176. Those fountains are fed through an underground piping network supplied by springs some 25 kilometres inland, a system designed to work by natural gravity without mechanical pumps.

Inside the palace about thirty principal rooms are arranged along the central axis and in the flanking wings. The Picture Hall occupies the middle of the plan and rises two storeys, while ceremonial access is provided by a square, two-storey Parade Staircase. Other named spaces include a large Dance Hall occupying the west wing, a 330-square-metre Throne Hall, the Chesmenskaya memorial hall, an Audience Hall, a White Dining Room, twin Chinese Cabinets to east and west, the Oak Cabinet and Oak Stairs, a small boudoir known as the Kuripkova parlour, the Imperial bedroom called the Divan Room, the Empress’s Cabinet, and the Coronation or Crown Room. These rooms served state, ceremonial and private functions through the palace’s history.

Decoration inside displays extensive carved and gilded woodwork associated with the later Baroque phase, stucco ornament and moulded bas-reliefs, and painted ceilings (plafond, painted ceiling) bearing allegorical and historical scenes. Notable painted ceilings were executed in the mid-18th century, including allegories and classical subjects dated to the early 1750s and earlier works from the 1720s. Floors include inlaid parquet (marquetry, inlaid wood flooring) using maple, walnut, light and dark oak and other exotic woods. Walls were covered with silks and lacquered panels in the Chinese-style cabinets, and large framed oil paintings and tapestry-like displays were used to line key rooms, most famously a sequence of hundreds of canvases displayed like a continuous hang in the Picture Hall.

Multiple decorative techniques appear in the fittings, including tempera wall painting, lacquer painting on panels and stucco, underglaze polychrome tiles applied to stoves, marquetry inlaid floors and porcelain chimneypieces produced by the Imperial Porcelain Factory. Sculptural groups and bas-reliefs appear on stair landings and in niches, with season allegories placed in the Parade Staircase. Park sculpture includes large figural groups; two statues identified as Adam and Eve were recovered and returned after the war, while the principal Samson statue that once centered the main cascade did not return and was replaced.

Overall condition today reflects extensive postwar recovery and rebuilding. Many sculptures and fountain pieces were dug up or moved and then restored to the park, and major interior rooms have been reconstructed or had key painted ceilings reproduced in staged restoration campaigns from the 1950s through the 1980s and beyond. Several state suites and representative halls were reopened in successive decades following careful restoration, while the hydraulic and garden systems have been reinstated so that the cascades and fountains function as intended.