After eight years of renovation, St. Petersburg’s Shuvalov Palace is finally reopening. The world can now view the famous Fabergé collection acquired by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg in 2004 for $100 million.
The centerpiece of the collection is a set of nine Easter eggs that the famous jeweler made for the Romanov family to mark historic events, like the ascent of Nicholas II to the throne or Russia’s war with Germany. Most of them hid a “surprise” inside – the first egg made, for example, contained a golden hen, which in turn, matryoshka-style, concealed a ruby crown. Carl Fabergé and his assistants made dozens of similar eggs, each a small masterpiece that have come to symbolize the over-the-top wealth of the tsarist family and the ingenuity of the empire’s jewelers.
The Shuvalov Palace, renovated to the tune of an estimated $30 million and leased through 2056 by the Link of Times Foundation, is also famous, and is as poshly appointed as the insides of a Fabergé egg. The palace, perched on the banks of the Fontanka River, was built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It belonged to Dmitry Naryshkin, a courtier who was married to Maria Chetvertinskaya, a favorite of Tsar Alexander I. Dmitry threw lavish balls in the palace, attracting all the beau monde, from the emperor to poet Alexander Pushkin. The palace eventually passed to the Shuvalov family, who owned it up to the revolution. Until it closed for renovation in the mid-2000s, it housed a string of mundane Soviet offices and slowly fell into disrepair.
Russia and Ukraine have blocked proposals to create a vast marine sanctuary in Antarctica to protect that continent’s penguins, whales, seabirds and giant squid by delineating a 1.6 million square kilometer protected area with restricted fishing.
Sometimes called the Ross Sea, this iceberg-covered part of the Southern Ocean is used for scientific research, specifically to study climate change. Since 2012, the US and New Zealand have floated two proposals to protect the area, but Russia has fishing interests in the region and voted against them during a meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.
Architectural preservation activists have launched a program to attract investors to dilapidated Moscow region estates. The storied family residences have been slowly wiped out by encroaching residential construction and a lack of funds for even the most basic restoration.
A member of preservationist group Archnadzor, Marina Khrustaleva, has teamed up with business manager Nune Akelyan to create a database of estates that might be of interest to investors. Inspired by Spain’s successful paradores program that has rescued historic castles by turning them into upscale hotels, and by England’s Highclere Castle, the setting for Downton Abbey, which now attracts throngs of visitors as the scenic backdrop for the popular television series, the Center for Capitalization of Heritage hopes to adapt the crumbling estates to the realities of the modern world, which have stood empty since when they housed either wealthy residents or Soviet institutions.
Some seven thousand family estates have survived from before the revolution, yet with each passing year their number dwindles due to fires, decay, or demolition.
St. Petersburg’s legendary Hermitage Museum has opened its own hotel in the city center. The five-star hotel was decorated in consultation with museum experts and offers information about the museum to its guests. Located on Pravda Street, the hotel has 126 rooms priced from about 5,600 rubles ($170) per night.
thehermitagehotel.ru
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