included suburban gardens commissioned by Peter I in French style and the
transformation of a Lutheran church in the city fortress into an Orthodox church
(1725–6). In the 1740s and 1750s St. Petersburg baroque appeared in palaces and
Orthodox churches. But at the same time in both areas local merchants and elites
were building in St. Petersburg style as well, such as a new Riga City Hall (1765) and
new churches and merchant homes in the Old Town. In none of this did Russian
churches or palaces make a specifically Russian stamp.
Russia’s most prominent public buildings came at the end of the century,
coinciding with the introduction of Russianizing reforms, such as integrating
Estland and Livland into the Russian gubernia system and their elites into the
systems mandated by the Charters to Nobility and Towns. As part of classicizing
urban renewal the“official architect of Livland” appointed by St. Petersburg
(1781–5) redesigned Riga’s Citadel, the locus of government, around a new square
edged with a grandiose neoclassical church of Sts. Peter and Paul and a governor’s
palace. In Reval a new governor’s palace (1773) was built in a restrained baroque
presaging the classicism that became dominant in subsequent decades.
Imperial architecture in Kyiv made a similarly muted statement, although in
this century Russia established a stronger physical presence here. Peter I razed the
Cossack capital at Baturin and built a fortress in Kyiv after Mazepa’sapostasy
(1709); over the century the town’s Pechersk neighborhood became the Russian
administrative and military center. Russian official buildings ran parallel
Figure 13.10Peter I’s charming“Ekaterinthal”palace (1718–23), designed for his wife
Catherine outside of Reval (contemporary Tallinn), evoked a restrained baroque. Photo:
Jack Kollmann.
Imperial Imaginary and the Political Center 289