Family Nest

Countess Alexandra Branitskaya, the wife of the Crown Hetman of Poland, owned the palace for 35 years before selling it to her relatives, the Princes Yusupov, for a hefty 250,000 rubles. The deed was made in favor of Branitskaya's nephew, Boris Yusupov.

The date the palace changed hands, March 5, 1830, spelled the beginning of a new, much more dynamic and glamorous era for the old palace, which would go down in Russian history and St. Petersburg's architectural chronicles under the name "Yusupov Palace."

The new owners began with a full revamp of the estate, which they entrusted to Andrei Mikhailov, an eminent Classicist architect and "architectural mentor" of the Arts Academy. Mikhailov remodeled and considerably enlarged the main palace, adding a new three-story easterly wing with a Banquet Room, the largest room on the property, on the second floor. He remodeled the palace's outbuildings and joined them together in a monumental structure receding deep into the estate, housing a labyrinthine art gallery leading towards an in-house theater. A number of greenhouses, a garden pavilion and landscaped garden were created, but Mikhailov's best work was exemplified by the palace's insuperably luxurious interiors, decked out in the solemn Russian Empire style.

Between 1840 and 1860, more improvements were added to the palace by Bernard Simone and Hippolitus Monigetti, whose creative careers coincided with the most romantic era in Russian architecture, that of "Historicism", when creative ideas of the past inspired new styles and trends such as Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Rococo, and Neoclassicism, which are all embedded in the interiors of the Yusupov Palace. Artful evidence of "retrospective reflection on the past" can be found in many different rooms of the palace, including the private theater, winter garden, music room, living rooms, dining rooms, libraries and bedrooms.

But in the early 1890s, the Yusupovs decided their palace was out of date once again, and invited a celebrated architect, Alexander Stepanov, to rectify this. Stepanov coped magnificently with the task, fitting the palace with electricity, water, heating, and sewerage utilities. He followed up by redesigning some of the palace's interiors. Stepanov's touch of excellence is evident in the decor of the Mauritanian Parlor and Oak Parlor, but his true masterpiece was the Yusupovs' pride and joy, a miniature private theater.

At the beginning of the 1900s, the architect A. Beloborodov renovated the ground floor suites for Felix Yusupov and his wife Irina. A student of the Arts Academy, Beloborodov recruited his fellow art students S. Chekhonin, V. Konashevich and N. Tyrsa to assist him. Neoclassicism, which was just coming in vogue, with a touch of Art Deco, was the prevalent style of the new interiors.