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"The building is a phoenix..." In 1837 the Winter Palace suffered a terrible fire. "We saw... an extensive glow covering St Petersburg and as its bright tongues spread above the city, the air became filled from one end to another with the hubbub of an incredible statement: the Winter Palace is on fire!" one witness wrote. The fire began on 17 December and raged for over 30 hours, destroying all the interior decoration of the Russian monarchs' residence. The remaining buildings were saved by the dismantlement of the passageway from the palace to the Small Hermitage and the blocking up of their windows. After the fire Nicholas I signed a set of rules for a rebuilding commission that was headed by the architects Vasily Stasov and Alexander Briullov. The rules stated that "the greater part of the palace building should be recreated just as it was before the fire". The palace was recreated in an exceptionally short period of time - 15 months, by Easter 1839. Very great importance was attached to restoring the previous appearance of the outside of the building and the state rooms, as the palace, the imperial residence, embodied the idea of the greatness of Russian monarchy. The fire fortunately spared many details on the facades of the building - architraves, keystones, cartouches, the capitals of the columns, the shape of cornices, the balustrades and the stone statuary on the roof. They were set in order and supplemented by new ones where necessary. The lost wooden bell-towers of the two palace churches and the dome above the Great Church had to be built again. The colour scheme of the Winter Palace facades that had been approved by Empress Elizabeth at the time of construction - a light yellow shade with the decorative elements and columns picked out in white - was retained after the 1837 fire as well. Contemporaries were unanimous in their admiration for the building that had risen from the ashes: "The appearance of the Winter Palace constructed anew with exceptional sumptuousness is magnificent and amazing." The restoration of the imperial residence was looked upon as "a colossal architectural feat". |
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