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Restoration work in the Menshikov Palace The Menshikov Palace was the first monumental masonry building to be constructed in St Petersburg. The palace, with grand lines, crowned by a high mansard roof and decorated with sculptures and princely crowns, became not merely a witness, but a symbol of the age of Peter the Great. In this edifice the architects and builders of the new capital gathered, as did the creators of the Russian navy. Here laws were devised and questions of Russian foreign policy settled. It was also the venue for many of Peter's famous assemblies (secular functions new to Russian culture). After the Tsar's death in 1725, that period in the palace's history came to an end. In 1727 Prince Alexander Menshikov was banished to Siberia. In the centuries that followed the architectural appearance of the palace underwent a number of changes. The systematic study of this architectural monument began in the 1950s. A many-sided restoration project aimed at returning the Menshikov Palace to its condition in the first quarter of the 18th century was drawn up in 1976. In 1980 the building was given back its high mansard roof, Ňut the decorative completion of the southern facade in the form of the crowns and vases that were the most characteristic attributes of the building in Peter's time was not carried out. The work to restore the building had been to a considerable extent completed by 1981 when a museum opened in the Menshikov Palace as a new department of the State Hermitage. Twenty years later, in 2001, the Hermitage embarked on a restoration of the facades of the Menshikov Palace. The work was entrusted to the Finnish Company Finn Remont Tec (FRT OY) under the technical supervision of the museum's Capital Construction Department. In the first phase of the work the cement rendering of the walls, coving, pilasters, cornices and columns was completely replaced by three-layer lime-cement plaster, the third layer being finely smoothed before painting. Such an approach makes the surface as smooth as possible and reduces the amount of dust that can settle on it. The restorers use a dry plaster mix, adding sand and water. This improves the quality of the work, while the composition of the plaster with microscopic pores allows the walls to "breathe". The facades were then painted; the cornices and downpipes were repaired; the mouldings decorating the facades and the oak window frames restored. That same year reconstruction of the elaborate gables was carried out. In 2001-02 the decoration of the gables - princely crowns and vases - was recreated. The preparation for this involved the production of large models of the crowns and a study of iconographic material and a surviving princely crown from the Menshikov Palace in Oranienbaum. The crowns were created using the galvanoplastic technisque in combination with raising. The steel framework was carefully primed and wrapped with glass fibre to prevent it coming into contact with the copper. The team worked on the restoration of the architectural-decorative appearance of the palace under the overall leadership of the Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky. The project was devised by the architects G.V. Mikhailov and O.A. Brunina. In November 2002, a monument to St Petersburg's first governor, Alexander Menshikov, created by the sculptor Maria Litovchenko-Anikushina, was installed in the grand courtyard of the palace. |
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