The Marble Palace

The Marble Room is a masterpiece of world architecture. The interior decor also includes elements of sculpture. The section of the hall up to the cornice still retains its original decor.

Fourteen pairs of fluted pilasters made of pink Tivdija marble divide the walls of the Marble Room into equal sections. The eagles (in Russian orly) of white Italian marble on garlands recall the palace’s first owner – Count Orlov.

Mikhail Kozlovsky’s reliefs depicting the episodes from the Punic Wars – Regulus Returning to Carthage and Camillus Delivering Rome – offer graphic allegories of national loyalty, duty and self-sacrifice. The hall ceiling is decorated by Stefano Torelli’s plafond The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche.

The final architectural treatment the Marble Room got in the mid-19th century, when during the reconstruction of the palace by Alexander Brullov, the ceiling between second and third floors was dismantled and the Room came to have two tiers of windows. The plafond was lifted to the level of the third floor and some bronze and crystal chandeliers were hanged.