Ice palace

An ice palace or ice castle is a castle-like structure made of blocks of ice. These blocks are usually harvested from nearby rivers or lakes when they become frozen in winter. The first known ice palace (or, rather, ice house, ледяной дом in Russian) appeared in St. Petersburg, Russia and was the handiwork of Empress Anna.

Anna Ivanovna's palace

In the cold winter of 1739&ndash;1740, Anna Ivanovna gave an order to build a palace made of ice in St. Petersburg. The palace and the surrounding festivities were part of celebration of Russia's victory over Turkey. She ordered the architect Pyotr Yeropkin to design the building. [http://icestudio.ru/history4.php "The Construction of the Ice Palace"] ru icon] It was built under the supervision of Georg Kraft, who left the detailed description of the palace. [ [http://www.popmech.ru/part/?articleid=64&rubricid=4 Леденящие подробности < Технологии < Популярная механика ] ]

The palace was 20 meters tall and 50 meters wide. Huge ice blocks were "glued" together with water. The garden was filled with ice trees with ice birds and an ice statue of an elephant. The outer walls were lined with ice sculptures. Before the palace there were artillery pieces also made of ice. The palace was also furnished with furniture made of ice, including an ice bed with ice mattress and pillows. The whole structure was surrounded with a tall wooden fence.

The festivities involving the Ice Palace included a mock wedding of two jesters. [The tradition of mock weddings has been known in Russia since Peter the Great. In fact, even the wedding festivities of Anna herself included a mock wedding of Peter's jester.] Prince Mikhail Alekseyevich Galitzine had married an Italian woman. Empress Anna saw this as an affront because she was a Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox. The wife died soon after but Anna did not forgive Galitzine and decided to punish him in an unusual manner. She first ordered him to become a jester.

The Empress selected prince Galitzine a new wife, an unattractive kalmyk court lady jester Avdotya Ivanovna Buzheninova. She forced the prince to marry her and displayed the newlyweds in a procession where they rode an elephant and were followed by a number of cripples. In the palace the newlyweds were closed into an icy nuptial chamber under heavy guard. The couple survived the night because the bride traded a pearl necklace with one of the guards for a sheepskin coat.

Empress Anna died the following year and the castle did not survive the next summer. The Russian reading public was made aware of Anna's mock palace in 1835, when Ivan Lazhechnikov (1792-1869) described her escapade in "The Ice House", one of the first historical novels in the language. The novel was made into a film as early as 1927.

Other ice palaces

Many ice palaces have been built since. In North America, one was built in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1883.

The capital city of Minnesota, St. Paul, has played host to several ice palaces since 1886 as part the city's Winter Carnival. Some palaces have featured ice blocks numbering in the tens of thousands. A 1992 structure had 25,000 and stretched to a height of 150 feet (45.7 m). One built in 1941 had 30,000 ice blocks. St. Paul last built an ice palace in January 2004.

Every year since 1954 the Quebec City Winter Carnival in Quebec City has featured ice palaces or ice castles of various sizes, depending on the budget, and has often used them to imprison briefly those persons who were judged to be too glum in this time of good cheer.
Saranac Lake, New York has an annual [http://saranaclake.com/carny.shtml winter carnival] in which an ice palace is built. This tradition dates back to the 19th century, when it was initiated to raise the spirits of tuberculosis patients who came to the town for recuperation over the long winter.

Saparmurat Niyazov, the recently deceased president of Turkmenistan, ordered the construction of a huge ice palace near the capital city of Aşgabat in April 2004, a remarkable project considering Turkmenistan's climate.

Although the appearance of the original ice palace is disputable, it is yearly rebuilt and open for public in Saint-Petersburg, Russia since 2005. [http://www.spb-guide.com/city/photos/sub/64/]

There have been modern developments in ice construction, including the now widespread use of snice as a mortar-alternative, instead of the more simple, but less reliable, use of water alone.

ee also

*Ice hotel

Notes