Launched by Tsarskoe Selo and PAO Gazprom last October, our large-scale reconstruction project of eight rooms in the Zubov Wing of the Catherine Palace is moving forward thanks to architectural drawings from the late 1980s.

The Private Space of Catherine II project includes the Blue Study or Snuffbox, the Mirror and Silver Studies, the Bedroom, the Domed and Chinese Halls, the Dressing Room and the Raphael Room. Those were the private apartments of Catherine the Great, designed for her by Charles Cameron and Giacomo Quarenghi in the eighteenth century and destroyed during World War Two.

Catherine’s Bedroom had very unique and intricate decorations, with milky-white glass panels all over the walls, doors, coving and ceiling. Set off by the white background were the delicate details of violet glass, such as paired pillars with gilt bronze bases and capitals and decorative panels on the doors and fireplace. The pillars alternated with mirrors topped by Wedgwood roundels. The wide frieze and coving were embellished with gilt bronze garlands.

The war-devastated interior was first assessed for restoration potential in 1948. Its condition was thoroughly documented, with technical drawings of a few surviving bronze details, as well as the lost ones possible to be re-made thanks to the dimensions and pictures available at archives.   

A reconstruction design project for Catherine’s Bedroom was started in 1986 and finished in the late 1980s, with over 140 highly detailed architectural drawings handed over to the Museum. Those include scaled-down watercolours of the walls and full-size drawings of the parquet patterns (with wood types), the coving and cornice, the ceiling plafond’s fragment, various wall decorations, the fireplace with a marvelous fireguard, the mirror frames and door portals, and many other details.

The architectural drawings from the 1980s are of great interest and great help now that the reconstruction of the rooms of Catherine II is in progress.