Kunstkamera, St. Petersburg, Russia

The Kunstkamera building is one of the few architectural monuments of Peter the Great’s Baroque of the early 18th century, which have been preserved in St. Petersburg to our time ...

According to legend, Peter the Great personally chose the place for the building. He drew attention to the two pines, which intricately intertwined and rooted in the trunk. Peter ordered to carefully cut down the trees, and give their most interesting parts to Kunstkamera.

This is one of the first exhibits of the Kunstkamera. It is now possible to look at it in the museum. In the place where the trees grew, Peter commanded to lay the foundation for the museum premises. The dimensions of the conceived building at that time were incredibly large: its width reached 15 m., And its length was slightly less than 100 m.

Peter I was constantly interested in construction and repeatedly hurried builders. However, during the life of Peter the building was never completed. By the beginning of 1725, only walls were erected. The laying of the tower, which crowns the building, and all the interior decoration was completed after the death of the king-reformer.

The architect George Johann Mattarnovi worked on the first project of the building, he began construction, but did not finish it due to death. Further, NF Gerbel took over the work, changing the project somewhat.

So, the window openings were decorated with brickwork, in his opinion, it looked much richer, but it was at odds with the original plan. The lower base of the tower was a three-story instead of two-story.

Under Gerbele, the building was lined up with an unfinished tower, in which cracks appeared.

Gaetano Chiaveri, a famous Italian architect who replaced Gerbele, found defects in the tower and insisted on a commission in which such famous architects as Mikhail Zemtsov, Domenico Trezzini, and a number of other architects participated. At their suggestion, the tower was dismantled.

Kiaveri has compiled an updated building design plan, according to which the shape of the tower is changing dramatically. Her bottom volume is slightly higher.

A colonnade appears around the cylinder tower, replacing the four pavilions. The height of the cylindrical part of the tower increases. In the end, the tower is crowned with a tower with an astronomical sphere.

The archaeological, ethnographic and anthropological collections of the Kunstkamera show all the diversity of the cultures of different peoples of the New and Old Worlds.

The museum features exhibitions that are devoted to the people of Australia, Oceania, America, Indonesia, Africa, Japan, China and other countries, as well as an exposition of monsters and various wonders of Peter I (enriched with monsters, stuffed two-headed lamb, etc.). One of the most famous exhibits of the museum is the globe-planetarium of the seventeenth century, its diameter is more than three meters.

The buildings of the Museum are located in the historical part of St. Petersburg on Vasilyevsky Island.
This location of Kunstkamera Peter I chose not by chance, he wanted everyone to see it from afar, join the culture and think about the sciences.

In the XVIII - XIX centuries, in the building of the Kunstkamera, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences founded by Peter the Great was located, which became the cradle of the current Russian Academy of Sciences, the Library of the Academy of Sciences, the Main Astronomical Observatory, St. Petersburg State University and many other modern Russian museum and scientific institutions .

No wonder that the image of the Kunstkamera building serves as the logo not only of the Museum, but also of the entire Russian Academy of Sciences.

Nearby, tourists will be interested in looking at the Rostral Columns, the Palace Bridge, the Tsar-Carpenter sculpture, the Pushkin House, and others.

Kunstkamera address

St. Petersburg, University Embankment, 3 (entrance for visitors from the Customs lane)

Kunstkamera schedule

The museum is open from 11:00 to 19:00
ticket office is open until 18:00

Monday is a day off
Cleaning day - the last Tuesday of each month.

Order tours by phone:
+7 (812) 328-14-12

Kunstkamera on google map

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