Former imperial palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia
For other uses, see Winter Palace (disambiguation).
The Winter Palace, from Palace Square
The Winter Palace, from Palace Embankment
The Winter Palace, from above
The Winter Palace[1] is a palace in Saint Petersburg that served as the official residence of the House of Romanov, previous emperors, from 1732 to 1917. The palace and its precincts now house the Hermitage Museum. Floor area is 233,345 square metres. (It has been calculated that the palace contains 1,886 doors, 1,945 windows, 1,500 rooms and 117 staircases).[2][3] Total area of the Winter Palace is 14.2 hectares.[4] Situated between Palace Embankment and Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and altered almost continuously between the late 1730s and 1837, when it was severely damaged by fire and immediately rebuilt.[5] The storming of the palace in 1917, as depicted in Soviet art and in Sergei Eisenstein's 1928 film October, became a symbol of the October Revolution.
The emperors constructed their palaces on a monumental scale that aimed to reflect the might and power of Imperial Russia. From the palace, the tsars[6] ruled over 22,800,000 square kilometers (8,800,000 sq mi)[7][8] (almost 1/6 of the Earth's landmass) and 125 million subjects by the end of the 19th century. Several architects participated in designing the Winter Palace—most notably the Italian Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771)—in what became known as the Elizabethan Baroque style. The green-and-white palace has the overall shape of an elongated rectangle, and its principal façade is 215 metres (705 ft) long and 30 m (98 ft) high. The Winter Palace has been calculated to contain 1,886 doors, 1,945 windows, 1,500 rooms and 117 staircases.[9] Following a serious fire, the palace's rebuilding of 1837 left the exterior unchanged, but large parts of the interior were redesigned in a variety of tastes and styles, leading the palace to be described as a "19th-century palace inspired by a model in Rococo style".[10]
In 1905, the Bloody Sunday occurred when demonstrators marched toward the Winter Palace, but by this time the Imperial Family had chosen to live in the more secure and secluded Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo (lit. "imperial village"), and returned to the Winter Palace only for formal and state occasions. Following the February Revolution of 1917, the palace operated for a short time as the seat of the Russian Provisional Government, ultimately led by Alexander Kerensky. Later that same year a detachment of Red Guard soldiers and sailors stormed the palace—a defining moment in the birth of the Soviet state, overthrowing the Provisional Government.
^Russian: Зимний дворец, tr. Zimniy dvorets, IPA:[ˈzʲimnʲɪjdvɐˈrʲets]; known from 1918 to 1943 as the Palace of Arts (Дворец Искусств, Dvorets Iskusstv)
^"Hermitage official website".
^"The Winter Palace". History Hit. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
^Ghazal, Zunaira (13 March 2023). "The Largest Palaces in the World (History & Travel Tips)". Revisiting History. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
^The numbering of the Winter Palaces varies. Most referees used in the writing of this page refer to the present palace as the fourth. That is: Trezzini, 1711 (I); Mattarnovy, 1721 (II); Trezzini, 1727 (III) and Rastrelli, 1732 (IV). Thus, to agree with the majority and because these four versions were "palaces" each differing from the last rather than recreations, this will be the numbering used here. However, other sources count the log cabin of Peter the Great as the first palace, while others discount Trezzini's 1727 rebuilding and others count the 1837 reconstruction as a 5th Winter Palace. One source (not used here) numbers a temporary wooden structure erected to house the court during the building of the present palace.
^In 1721 Tsar Peter I received the title of Emperor from the Governing Senate. Scholars use the titles of "Tsar" and "Emperor" (and their feminine forms) interchangeably.
^Rein Taagepera (September 1997). "Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia". International Studies Quarterly. 41 (3): 498. doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00053. JSTOR 2600793. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
^Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (December 2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires". Journal of World-Systems Research. 12 (2): 223. ISSN 1076-156X. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
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