Photographs of the Hall, taken in 2008
The Armorial Hall
Closeup of the gold pillars
Closeup of the door
Location of the Hall within the Palace
The Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace,Saint Petersburg, is a vast chamber originally designed for official ceremonies. The Armorial Hall is located between the Military Gallery and the palace courtyard.
The current hall was designed by Vasily Stasov in the late 1830s, after the original hall was damaged by an extensive palace fire in 1837; it was at this time that the fluted columns were gilded. Along with St George's Hall and the Nicholas Hall, it was one of the palace's main areas for entertaining. The edges of the hall are decorated with vast stucco panoplies. In the center of the hall sits a lapidary vase made of aventurine from 1842.
Under the direction of Anatoly Lunacharsky, who became the Commissar of Enlightenment after the October Revolution, the Armorial Hall was used as a concert hall, with a capacity of up to 2,000.
Today, as part of the State Hermitage Museum, this room retains its original decoration.
The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The second-largest art museum in the world, it was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. It attracted 4,956,524 visitors in 2019, ranking it eighth among the most visited art museums in the world.
The Catherine Palace is a Rococo palace in Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin), 30 km south of St. Petersburg, Russia. It was the summer residence of the Russian tsars.
Kuskovo was the summer country house and estate of the Sheremetev family. Built in the mid-18th century, it was originally situated several miles to the east of Moscow but now is part of the East District of the city. It was one of the first great summer country estates of the Russian nobility, and one of the few near Moscow still preserved. Today the estate is the home of the Russian State Museum of Ceramics, and the park is a favourite place of recreation for Muscovites.
The State Russian Museum, formerly the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III, on Arts Square in Saint Petersburg, is the world's largest depository of Russian fine art. It is also one of the largest art museums in the world with total area over 30 hectares.
The Russian State Library is the national library of Russia, located in Moscow. It is the largest in the country and the fifth largest in the world for its collection of books. It was named the V. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR from 1925 until it was renamed in 1992 as the Russian State Library.
The Military Gallery is a gallery of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The gallery is a setting for 332 portraits of generals who took part in the Patriotic War of 1812. The portraits were painted by George Dawe and his Russian assistants Alexander Polyakov (1801-1835), a serf, and Wilhelm August Golicke.
The appearance of St. Petersburg includes long, straight boulevards, vast spaces, gardens and parks, decorative wrought-iron fences, monuments and decorative sculptures. The Neva River itself, together with its many canals and their granite embankments and bridges help to give the city its particular ambience.
The Winter Palace was the official residence of the Russian Emperors from 1732 to 1917. Today, the palace and its precincts form the Hermitage Museum. Situated between Palace Embankment and Palace Square, in Saint Petersburg, 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. The storming of the palace in 1917, as depicted in Soviet propaganda art and Sergei Eisenstein's 1927 film October, became an iconic symbol of the Russian Revolution.
The Malachite Room of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, was designed in the late 1830s by the architect Alexander Briullov for use a formal reception room for the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, wife of Nicholas I. It replaced the Jasper Room, which was destroyed in the fire of 1837.
The principal or Jordan Staircase of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg is so called because on the Feast of the Epiphany the Tsar descended this imperial staircase in state for the ceremony of the "Blessing of the Waters" of the Neva River, a celebration of Christ's baptism in the Jordan River. The staircase is one of the few parts of the palace retaining the original 18th-century style. The massive grey granite columns, however, were added in the mid 19th century.
The Field Marshals' Hall of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg was built to honor Imperial Russia's greatest military leaders—Russian generals who attained the rank of Field Marshal..
The Small Throne Room of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, also known as the Peter the Great Memorial Hall, was created for Tsar Nicholas I in 1833, by the architect Auguste de Montferrand. Following a fire in 1837, in which most of the palace was destroyed, the room was recreated exactly as it had been before by the architect Vasily Stasov.
St George's Hall is one of the largest state rooms in the Winter Palace, St Petersburg. It is located on the eastern side of the palace, and connected to The Hermitage by the smaller Apollo Room.
The Grand Church of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, sometimes referred to as the Winter Palace's cathedral, was consecrated in 1763. It is located on the piano nobile in the eastern wing of the Winter Palace, and is the larger, and principal, of two churches within the Palace. A smaller, more private church was constructed in 1768, near the private apartment in the northwest part of the wing. The Grand Church was designed by Francesco Rastrelli, and has been described as "one of the most splendid rooms" in the Palace. Today, the church is an unconsecrated exhibition hall of the State Hermitage Museum.
The White Hall of the Winter Palace was designed by the architect Alexander Briullov to commemorate the marriage of the Tsarevich to Maria of Hesse in 1841. This period coincided with a large rebuilding of the Winter Palace following a severe fire in 1837. While the exterior of the palace was recreated in its original 18th-century style, much of the interior was rebuilt in a variety of styles, dependent on the whims and tastes of their intended occupants.
The Rotunda of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg is a circular hall in the northwest wing of the palace created for Tsar Nicholas I by the architect Auguste de Montferrand. Designed in a circular neoclassical temple style, it served as an anteroom, vestibule and link between the more public state rooms of the palace and the more intimate rooms used by the Imperial family. The room is domed and top lit by an oculus.
The Arabian Hall, sometimes known as the Blackamoor Hall or the Arabian Dining Room, is one of the private rooms of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. In the Tsarist era, it was the room from which imperial processions through the state rooms began. The double doors were designed to be on a straight axis through the principal state rooms and ultimately the Jordan Staircase, forming an enfilade. Thus it was here the Romanov family often assembled, in private, before state receptions and occasions. The privacy of the room was not compromised by the small private courtyard from which windows, which once led to the Tsaritsa's winter-garden below, admitted light.
The Neva Enfilade of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, is a series of three large halls arranged in an enfilade along the palace's massive facade facing the River Neva.
The Private Apartments of the Winter Palace are sited on the piano nobile of the western wing of the former imperial palace, the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. Access to the private rooms, for members of the Imperial Family, from the exterior was usually through the Saltykov Entrance which was reserved for use by only the Tsar, Tsaritsa and grand dukes and grand duchesses. A second access was through a discrete box-like porch, on the western end of the Palace's Neva façade. From the ground floor, it can be accessed from the October Staircase, formerly known as His Majesty's Own Staircase; this double-flighted imperial staircase was a secondary entrance to the private apartments, and provided a more convenient route to the palace's ground floor and private entrances than the more formal and ceremonial public route through the state apartments. During the October Revolution of 1917, this was the entrance by which the revolutionaries gained access to the palace in order to arrest the Provisional Government in the small private dining room. Since that date it has been known as the October Staircase and has a plaque commemorating the event. Despite its size and grandeur, the October Staircase was a secondary staircase, the Jordan Staircase being the principal.
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