Marble Palace

This guide to the Marble Palace in Saint Petersburg traces Catherine the Great's gift to Grigory Orlov, the man who helped lead the 1762 coup that put her on the Russian throne. You'll hear how she commissioned a facade in thirty-two different marbles hauled from Karelia, the Urals and Finland, a first for the city, and how architect Antonio Rinaldi spent seventeen years finishing it. Orlov died in 1783, two years before the last stone was set, and grief moved Catherine to buy the empty palace back from his heirs before passing it to her own grandson.