Yelaginoostrovskiy Dvorets-Muzey

This guide to the Yelaginoostrovskiy Palace in Saint Petersburg opens in the 1780s, when the island belonged to a courtier obsessed with alchemy, who invited Europe's most notorious con man to help him turn metal into gold, with awkward results. Decades later Emperor Alexander I bought the island for his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, who wanted a summer retreat closer to the city, and brought in architect Carlo Rossi to build it. Rossi dressed the interiors in marble modeled on the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the empress filled these rooms with music until her death in 1828. Look up at the portico as you approach the entrance.