The Russia Journal

The Petrovsky Palace and park is one of Moscow's most picturesque and interesting places, and yet you can consider yourself lucky if you catch more than a fleeting glimpse of it on a car ride to Sheremetyevo airport.

Why has it not been opened to the public? It's a question that has been bothering a number of people interested in protecting Russia's national heritage – all the more so because the park was a popular recreational place for Muscovites for more than 200 years.

Located near the Dynamo metro station, and not far from Leningradsky Prospekt, the Petrovsky Palace-on-the-Way, as it was called almost from the start, was built for Catherine the Great and designed by the famous Russian architect Matvei Kazakov in 1775-82.

It was intended as a stopover palace for the empress on her way to Moscow from St. Petersburg, so that she could have a chance to rest and tidy up before entering Moscow. After that, until 1917, it was the palace from where all the tsars began their journeys to the Kremlin for their coronation.

In the fall of 1812, the palace had another famous visitor. Petrovsky Palace was where Napoleon sat waiting, in vain, for the keys of Moscow and later where he hid from the terrible fires that engulfed the occupied city. "From here, all in thoughts, he looked at the terrible fire," the poet Alexander Pushkin wrote. "Napoleon's room" in the palace was preserved intact, until recently.

Indeed, until recently, the Petrovsky Palace was exceptionally lucky. Of the seven imperial palaces in Moscow, it was the only one not reconstructed by the Bolsheviks. Allocated to the secret Zhukovsky Military-Engineering Academy of Aviation in 1923, it was declared out of bounds to the general public.

Only with Perestroika could the public visit the palace once more, and then only in groups of organized guided tours. "We even had a timid hope that the palace would be made into a museum," historian Artyom Zadikian said. But what happened? Instead of a museum, commercial interests appear to have taken precedence.

First of all, two years ago, the Moscow government decreed that the palace and its surrounding land of 3.2 hectares be taken away from the Aviation Academy. Then it was said that the Moscow government was launching a program of restoration and reconstruction of the palace with the aim of making it into a deluxe hotel equipped with facilities for official events.

At the same time, a number of people specializing in protecting the country's architectural heritage have argued that the word "reconstruction" is inapplicable. They point out that, thanks to the Academy, which was meticulous in carrying out minor repairs and maintenance whenever necessary, the interior has remained in excellent condition.

Nevertheless, reconstruction appears to be in full swing. Furthermore, all the unique fittings and movable decorations have, for the large part, been secretly moved to unknown destinations. All that is publicly known is that the Tretyakov Art Gallery is currently storing the furniture.

The Petrovsky Palace is unusually beautiful. Built in red brick in an eclectic style that still manages to look unmistakably Russian, if somewhat Gothic, it is topped with a huge dome. Its central facade is decorated in old Russian style with stucco moldings, arches and gates, while its windows look out onto a sweeping panorama of the park. The towers, resembling Genoa fortresses, are especially impressive. Similarly, the "Turkish" tower, which is located in the park, has a striking appearance. Hexahedral, it resembles a Muslim minaret from Istanbul or ancient Damascus. The oriental architecture is no coincidence. During Catherine the Great's rule, Russia waged a series of victorious wars against Turkey with the aim of liberating southern and southeastern Europe from Ottoman rule.

One of the alleys in the park leads to the Church of the Annunciation (1844-47) which, until recently, was a miserable pile of ruins. However, a restoration project that started in the 1980s was completed in the late 1990s. There is a beautiful modern mosaic in the church depicting the Consecrator and Confessor of Moscow, Patriarch Tikhon, who, after the 1917 Revolution, was one of the few who dared to openly resist the Communists.

The mosaic represents the first publicly displayed image of the priest, who was recently canonized as a saint. Next to the church is the Sunday school building, which was recently restored by public activists. It is now a spiritual and cultural center where theologians, priests, historians, writers and doctors read lectures for adults and teach children.

The Aviation Academy – known as "the Palace of Red Aviation" – has unsurprisingly left memorials of its tenure to posterity. Since a number of eminent aviation designers were associated with the palace, including the world's first spaceman, Yury Gagarin, one of the academy's graduates, there are two monuments in the park to Russian space-exploration prowess.

One of them is a statue of the brilliant engineer, specialist in aero-hydro-dynamics and the father of Russian aviation, Nikolai Zhukovsky. Nearby is a statue of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who was considered a groundbreaking theorist in the area of space navigation. Partially deaf, a modest and shy teacher, he is credited with having made Russia's early space flights possible.

In many ways, the history of the Petrovsky Palace reflects some of the contradictions of modern Russia – a combination of philistinism and enlightenment; secrecy on the part of the authorities and self-sacrifice of individuals for the betterment of society.

To date, the mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, usually only too pleased to publicize construction work in the capital, has on this occasion remained uncharacteristically silent about what is going on at Petrovsky Palace. Those who have been concerned with saving it and opening it to the public, consider that, at the very least, questions relating to its immediate future should be publicized and Luzhkov, furthermore, should answer them.