|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Declared a museum on a par with the Hermitage..." On 30 October 1917, five days after the storming of the Winter Palace, the Military Revolutionary Committee of the government of the Russian Republic declared the palace "a State museum on a par with the Hermitage". In 1923, under the direction of the architect Alexander Sivkov, work began on a programme to convert the palace ensemble into a museum complex. This programme included the reconstruction of the Winter Palace, now known as "the Palace of Arts". After the revolution the appearance of the garden opposite the Admiralty also changed: the magnificent railing was dismantled and the wrought-iron work moved to the 9th January Garden in one of the working-class areas of the city, close to the Narva Gate. An important event that took place in the 1920s was the restoration of the palace facades: five metal balconies constructed in the mid-19th century were removed, together with the bay-window pavilions above the entrances onto Palace Square and the tower erected above the "Private Entrance" in the 1880s. In 1927, for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the facades were painted a greyish-green colour with white columns, architraves and cornices, and almost black (imitation of dark bronze) capitals and mouldings. In the period that followed, the experiments with the building's colour scheme continued: three years later, at the suggestion of the architect Vladimir Shchuko, the palace was painted in two shades of brownish-grey, then yellowish-orange with white and a dark tone. In 1941 it was decided to repair the facades and to paint them pale blue, which provoked serious debate, but the Nazi attack on the country forced the camouflaging of the building with khaki paint. |
|
|||||
|
Copyright © 2011 State Hermitage Museum |
