The display acquaints visitors with the unique architectural monument dating back to the first quarter of the 18th century.
Alexei Fyodorovich Zubov
Winter Palace of Peter I
Series of the 'small' views of St Petersburg of
11 engravings enclosed to the
"Panorama of St Petersburg" by A. Zubov
Russia. 1716/1717
Etching with line engraving
The year 1992 saw the opening of the display "The Winter Palace of Peter I" in the building of the Hermitage Theatre.
Visitors can view a unique architectural monument from the first quarter of the 18th century. For many years it was believed that when Giacomo Quarenghi erected the Hermitage Theatre (1783 - 89) on the site occupied by the Winter Palace of Peter the Great, the former residence had been razed to the ground. Documents from the period when the theatre was under construction, however, indicated that the architect retained not only individual walls of the basement and ground floor of Peter's palace, but even whole groups of rooms with various functions. The research carried out by Hermitage architects between 1976 and 1986 revealed an extensive area of the former courtyard beneath the theatre stage enclosed on two sides by the arcades of passageway galleries and enfilades of palace rooms.
Beneath the auditorium part of the small residential block survived that in Peter's time was referred to as "the small chambers"(architect Georg Mattarnovy, 1716 - 20) and consisted of a few rooms occupied by the Tsar himself. Besides this, on two floors of the theatre along the Winter Canal there survived twelve living rooms used by Catherine I (architect Domenico Trezzini, 1726 - 27). The restoration and reconstruction of the Hermitage Theatre building with the creation of the memorial display "The Winter Palace of Peter I" brought the team of Hermitage architects headed by chief architect V.P. Lukin the State Prize of the Russian Federation.
