Tauride Palace

This guide to Tauride Palace in Saint Petersburg begins with the golden hall built in the 1780s for Empress Catherine the Great's favorite, Prince Grigory Potemkin, and the extravagant party he threw here in 1791 to try to win her back. It follows the palace's turn as seat of the State Duma, then, after 1917, as the hall where Russia's only freely elected Constituent Assembly argued through a single overnight session under Bolshevik guard. Look at the columns around you as you picture that night's debate.