
Tauride Palace
Golden-columned palace built for an empress favorite, later home to Russia first elected parliament.
Location
About this audio guide
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.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Marble Palace
First stone-faced palace in the city, sheathed in thirty-two marbles as a gift for an empress's favorite.
Tauride Garden
Landscaped park of ponds and winding paths, laid out for a prince by an English gardener in the seventeen eighties.
The Museum of Political History of Russia
Art nouveau mansion built for a prima ballerina, later seized as Bolshevik headquarters where Lenin gave balcony speeches in nineteen seventeen.
Alexander Palace
Neoclassical imperial residence where a deposed emperor's family lived under armed guard before exile.
Menshikovskiy Dvorets
Oval Petrine Baroque palace begun for a disgraced imperial favorite, remade for royal owners.
The National Congress Palace
Baroque imperial estate rebuilt from wartime ruins into a state congress and summit venue.