- Pella Palace
Pella Palace (Пелла дворе́ц) is a former summer residence of
Catherine II of Russia . It was situated on the left bank of theNeva River , 30 km east ofSaint Petersburg , where the town of Otradnoye now stands.Extremely fond of her grandson Alexander, the Empress liked to think about him as the new
Alexander the Great . In November 1784 she purchased the estate of Pallila (also called Ivanovskaya Myza) from the heirs ofIvan Neplyuev . Early in 1785, she visited the manor in the company of her lover,Prince Potemkin , and determined to build the grandest of her residences there. Its name was changed from Pallila toPella , in order to remind Catherine about the birthplace of Alexander the Great.Potemkin's favorite architect,
Ivan Starov , was instructed to recreate the palace of the ancient rulers of Macedon in the Neoclassical style and to suitably adorn the residence with antique objets d'art. In order to accomplish the task, Starov obtained copies ofÉtienne-Louis Boullée 's grandiose designs for rebulding theThe Empress invested into the project the exorbitant sum of 823,389.93 roubles before the
Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792 broke out and construction works were suspended (on3 November ,1789 ). The shell of the palace, with a riverside frontage stretching for 500 meters, remainedin situ until December 1796, when Catherine's successor Paul, eager to obliterate the memory of his mother's undertakings, ordered the palace to be demolished and materials to be reused for construction ofSt. Michael's Castle in St. Petersburg. Only several outbuildings and a post station survived his short reign.Online references
*ru icon [http://www.sablino.ru/oblast/starov2.php Palaces and Manors of the Ladoga Region]
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