The Mansion on the Moika

It took the Yusupovs' Palace, or, more precisely, their sprawling downtown estate - one of the very few similar properties extant in St. Petersburg - nearly two centuries to shape up. Like other aristocratic estates in the historical city center, the Yusupov Palace was associated with many prominent figures in St. Petersburg's history, not just the Yusupovs. In fact, its pre-Yusupov period had lasted more than a century. In the early 18th century, a small palace was built for Princess Praskovia, Peter the Great's niece, on the left bank of the Moika River. In 1726, Praskovia gave her estate to the Semyonovsky Royal Guard Regiment, which would make the palace its headquarters until 1742. In the mid-1740s, the palace was merged with a larger estate belonging to Count Pyotr Shuvalov. This wily politician, master of backdoor intrigue, came into prominence following Peter's daughter Elizabeth's palace coup, and wielded enormous influence in the government throughout her reign.

Time has erased the name of the architect who built the palace as part of Count Shuvalov's new, larger estate. The only historical evidence is a 1760 drawing by M. Makhaev, which shows a fairly typical Russian Baroque mansion. Evidently, Count Shuvalov hosted his sumptuous parties and received his royal patroness here. The birth of Tsarevich Paul, the would-be Russian Emperor, was marked with a luxurious fancy-dress ball at Shuvalov's Palace on the Moika in 1754.

Pyotr Shuvalov's son, Count Andrei, sold his father's mansion. A young, ambitious exponent of a new breed of courtiers favored by Catherine II, Andrei probably despised his parental nest as obsolete and archaic. The young Shuvalov, who was an acolyte of the emerging new fashion for Classicism - was planning to build another palace more to his taste farther up the Moika.

The new palace, designed by the celebrated architect J.-B. Vallain de la Motte, was built in the 1770s. De la Motte placed the front entrance inside the courtyard. The seven meter-high fence of the courtyard, adorned with an elegant Classical colonnade, is the only original palace structure that has survived from that period.

The government purchased the Moika mansion from the Shuvalov descendants, and Empress Catherine gave it as a gift to her maid of honor, Countess Alexandra Branitskaya, in 1795. There is no historical evidence of any substantial remodeling performed in those years.