Neva Enfilade of the Winter Palace

The Neva Enfilade of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, is a series of three large halls arranged in an enfilade along the palace's massive facade facing the River Neva.

Originally designed as a series of five state rooms by the architect Francesco Rastrelli in 1753, they were transformed into an enfilade of three vast halls in 1790 by Giacomo Quarenghi. Following a fire in 1837 they were rebuilt under the direction of Vasily Stasov. Frequently used as the palace ballrooms, they formed a processional route, and were the focus of the imperial court. In 1915, the last Tsar, Nicholas II, had the enfilade transformed into a military hospital. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the enfilade, along with the remainder of the building, has been used as a series of exhibition halls of the State Hermitage Museum.

The Palace was originally built in 1732, as an official residence for the Tsaritsa Anna I of Russia and designed by the architect Francesco Rastrelli. The Tsaritsa found the small Winter palace of Peter the Great insufficiently grand, and had taken over the neighbouring, and grander, palace of Admiral General Fyodor Matveyevich Apraksin, this she had rebuilt to form her own Winter Palace.

During the reign of Anna's successor, Elizabeth, Rastrelli, still working to his original plan, devised an entirely new scheme in 1753, on a colossal scale—the present Baroque Winter Palace (externally the palace seen today); the Tsaritsa wanted the palace to exceed in beauty and size all other European royal palaces. The expedited completion of the palace became a matter of national honour to the Empress, and to pay for it taxes were increased on salt and alcohol to fund the extra costs, although the Russian people were already burdened by taxes to pay for Russia's wars. The final cost was 2,500,000 rubles. By 1759, shortly before Elizabeth's death, an imperial Palace truly worthy of the name was nearing completion; at that time, the Neva enfilade contained five the principal state rooms. Work continued during the short reign of Elizabeth's nephew Peter III and on into the reign of Peter's widow Catherine the Great.

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