SUMMER GARDEN, Summer Palace

The Summer Palace, which at the beginning of the 18th century was the summer residence of Tsar Peter the Great, is located in a corner of the Summer Garden, on a promontory between the Neva and Fontanka rivers.

What immediately strikes the observer is the simplicity of the building compared to other imperial residences, but that's exactly how the tsar wanted it.

Peter I had originally bought a farmhouse here, which he then had rebuilt in Dutch style, around 1707; shortly afterwards, however, he commissioned the architect Domenico Trezzini to replace it with the small construction you can see today, arranged on two floors with seven rooms on each floor: the tsar lived on the lower floor, while his wife and children lived on the upper floor....