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Arsenal wing

In the mid-19th century, Emperor Nicholas I entrusted the architect Roman Ivanovich Kuzmin with the task of rebuilding the side wings of the palace with the aim of creating apartments intended for the imperial family and court, as well as various service rooms. The reconstruction turned out to be rather extensive - the old walls were almost entirely taken down, both wings were raised, the height of the side buildings was made equal to the height of the semicircular wings. The building's proportions became more monumental. After reconstruction, Arsenal wing practically turned into a separate palace.

The newly rebuilt wing now contained over two hundred rooms: here the emperors Nicholas I, Alexander II and Alexander III resided with their families; there were rooms for their many relatives, intimate associates and servants. A significant part of the Arsenal Wing suffered during the Great Patriotic War, but full-scale restoration work did not begin until 2012. lt was carried out on the basis of historical archive materials: historical plans and blueprints from the middle and late-19th century, lists of expenditures for the materials used in the construction and finishing, inventories of objects going back from 1858 to 1938, as well as historical photographs and measurements of the premises that have survived to this day.

The collection of Gatchina Palace hosts a wide spectrum of visual and other materials that aided in carrying out the restoration work: views of the interiors, watercolor paintings done in the 1860s-1880s commissioned by Emperor Alexander II from the artist Eduard Petrovich Hau; pre-WWII photographs taken by Mikhail Antonovich Velichko; inventories from 1938-1940; fragments of the decorative furnishings of the interiors; as well as conserved elements of the architectural and artistic details of the interior facades of the Arsenal Wing. All of this helped in searching for the right solution during preparation for the technical work.

This work involved renovating and restoring the walls and floors; dismantling later partitions, restoring the floorplan and historical openings in accordance with the iconography; clearing and reinforcing the surviving fragments of artificial marble; restoring extant architectural details and recreating the lost elements of stucco decor of the walls, vaults, and plafonds; restoring the floor with its original design, the parquet and so on. In December 2016 work was completed in reconstructing two unique, grand interiors: the Marble Staircase and the Rotunda under the coat of arms. In addition, for the first time since the War, visitors of the palace can see the furnishings of the facades of the courtyard of the Arsenal Wing reborn.