The Lithuanian Castle building was erected on a plot of land that belonged in 1738, according to Sichgeim’s plan, to Anna Gavrilovna Yaguzinskaya (née Golovkina), granddaughter of Boyar Golovkin, uncle of Peter I’s mother, and daughter of the state chancellor Golovkin. After marrying Count M. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, she became involved in the “Bott-Lopukhin conspiracy” against Elizabeth Petrovna, was subjected to torture, sentenced to execution which was commuted to exile, whipped with a knout, and had her tongue cut out. Notes to the 18th-century Saint Petersburg plan reported that in 1779, on this site, there was a dacha of the historian, writer, and mason I. P. Elagin.
The original building on the plan — an irregular pentagon with round towers at the corners — was constructed between 1782 and 1787 according to the design of architect I. E. Starov, a renowned master of classicism. A description of this castle, made in 1794 by ethnographer, doctor, and traveler I. G. Georgi, has been preserved: “A newly built prison castle, completed in 1787, still empty and its church not yet consecrated. It occupies the left corner formed by the Moika and Nikolsky Canal in the shape of an irregular pentagon, two stories high, with very thick walls, iron gates, and no windows on the outside. It has only one row of prisons (cells) in width and a corridor in front of all the prisons. The prisons and their windows vary in size but are otherwise uniform. All windows are set high and face the courtyard. Each prison has a brick stove, a small brick table and chair, iron doors on the outside, and a necessary place in the same wall. The kitchens are somewhat lighter. The second floor is exactly like the lower one I have described here. On all five corners of the roof there is a tall round large dome, which serves as a storeroom. In the yard, a small prison was built, similar in appearance and height to the exterior... The yard, six sazhen wide, around the inner prison, is intended for criminals to use fresh air.”
According to G. I. Zuev, in 1797 it housed the Cavalry Guards Regiment, and later the Lithuanian Musketeer Regiment. In 1797, the Senate Battalion was moved into this building, which in 1801 became the Lithuanian Musketeer Regiment. Thanks to this, the building received its name. In the 1810s, the Guards’ coach house was located here.
Later, at the suggestion of the Saint Petersburg military governor-general, the castle was transferred to the City Duma for reconstruction into a prison. In 1820, architect I. I. Charlemagne (the first), a student of Charles Cameron who worked in Russia, was invited to prepare a project for a city prison to be built on the right bank of the Fontanka “according to the latest English system.” Charlemagne prepared two projects, neither of which was realized.
In 1822, due to overcrowding of the city prison, Alexander I ordered the Lithuanian barracks to be rebuilt into a prison, and Charlemagne received a new proposal to adapt the Lithuanian Castle into a prison.
Charlemagne’s project envisaged preserving the original composition by I. E. Starov but giving the facades a new Empire style design. For this, Charlemagne, with the participation of architect P. S. Plavov, highlighted the central risalit facing Officers’ Street (now Dekabristov Street) with a triangular pediment, on which he installed a cross supported by two angels, made by the famous stone carver S. S. Pimenov from Pudozh stone. High windows were cut into the walls, five old towers were dismantled and replaced by two new corner towers. The part of the building facing the Moika was also framed by two corner towers. One of them housed a well connected to the Moika. Additionally, corridors on the courtyard side were rebuilt, several toilets were installed, and the prison cells were rearranged. The front tower facing the Lithuanian Bridge had low and heavy gates, above which was a black plaque inscribed “Prison Castle.” The architect also prepared a project for the interior of the prison church. Decorative work was done by painter D. I. Antonelli, plasterer P. Sipyagin, and decorator F. Brandukov. Madame Gorikhvostova donated an icon of the Most Merciful Savior to the church, in whose name the temple was consecrated on October 17, 1826. The Spasskaya Church was expanded in 1884. The building was repainted in a grayish-white color. In the second half of the 19th century, the prison also housed a mosque, a Catholic church, and a Lutheran church.
The city prison had 103 cells and was divided into 10 isolated departments depending on the type of criminal offense. It was planned to accommodate up to 600 detainees. According to data from the 1860s, the Lithuanian Castle was overcrowded, usually holding 800–810 prisoners, but after the 1861 peasant reform, the number often exceeded 900–1000. On two floors, in different departments, were murderers, thieves, swindlers, suspects of theft and fraud (separate from the convicted), vagrants, passportless persons, as well as so-called “carefree” detainees (merchants, townspeople, and foreigners) exempt from work. Different collar colors on prisoners’ jackets (blue, yellow, red, crimson, black, green) indicated their department affiliation. Gradually, the colored collar rule ceased and disappeared by the 1860s. The daily maintenance allowance per prisoner ranged from 10 to 50 kopecks.
In 1823, the Lithuanian Castle was renamed the Saint Petersburg City Prison and designated a general-purpose prison. It was intended to hold investigative and trial detainees, minors, men, women, and accompanying children. It could also hold convicts, transit prisoners, exiles, those under administrative arrest, and insolvent debtors. In 1884, the Lithuanian Castle became a correctional prison. From the second half of the 19th century, political prisoners were also held there alongside criminals. In the early 20th century, participants of the labor movement, including those involved in the “Obukhov Defense” of 1901, were imprisoned in the Lithuanian Castle.
Between 1841 and 1849, the castle was repaired and rebuilt according to the project of P. I. Gabertzettel: a third floor was added above the second floor of the wing facing Prison Lane. According to early 19th-century building plans, the wing facing the Moika contained the following: on the first floor, in the eastern tower — a kvass room; in the western tower — a water pump; in the wing itself — the steward’s apartment and vestibule; in the adjoining part of the wing facing Kryukov Canal — departments for minors and married invalids; on the second floor, in the eastern tower, in the wing facing the Moika, and the adjoining part facing Kryukov Canal — a male infirmary; in the western tower — a pharmacy; in the adjoining part of the wing on Prison Lane — the pharmacist’s apartment. On an earlier plan signed by architect Charlemagne, pencil notes indicate that on the first floor there was: in the eastern tower — a storeroom; in the western tower — a pharmacy; in the wing facing the Moika — an apartment; in the adjoining part of the wing facing Kryukov Canal — a bakery; and on the second floor — a hospital.
In 1842, the owner of the neighboring plot, E. P. Truveller, sold part of it to the City Duma to organize a lane along the prison. She petitioned the Saint Petersburg military governor-general to name the lane Zamkovy (Castle Lane), but by imperial decree it was named Tyuremny (Prison Lane) (now Matveeva Lane).
In 1851, Alexey Grech published the reference book "Petersburg in Your Pocket," which also contained information about the Lithuanian Castle: “The City Prison (at the corner of Officers’ Street, along Kryukov Canal, and on the Moika, opposite New Holland) is housed in a building constructed in 1787 to implement the Howard prison system; but this plan did not materialize. Later, the building was converted into barracks, first for the Lithuanian Regiment (not the current Guards but the army regiment formed from Semenovsky battalions, hence the name Lithuanian Castle). The church faces the facade on Officers’ Street. Recently, a lane was made behind the prison from the Moika to Officers’ Street to prevent any communication with the prison.”
In 1883–1884, the prison building was reconstructed according to the project of K. I. Reimers. On February 27 (March 12), 1917, around 6 a.m., sailors of the 8th Fleet crew, quartered in the Kryukov naval barracks, together with shipyard workers, seized the Lithuanian Castle. All prisoners, including criminals, were released. Political prisoners joined the insurgents and led a column of demonstrators under red flags. The building was set on fire. The blackened walls of the Lithuanian Castle stood uncleaned for a long time.
Alexander Blok wrote to his mother on March 23, 1917: “The Lithuanian Castle and the district court burned to the ground. The beauty of their facades, polished by fire, stands out, and all the filth that disfigured their interiors has burned away.”
In 1929, a decision was made to demolish the castle, and in the late 1920s and early 1930s it was dismantled. On the massive and sturdy foundation of the old Lithuanian Castle, a residential complex (houses No. 29 and No. 29a) was built according to the project of Soviet architects for workers and employees of the Admiralty and Baltic factories. In 1930, architects I. A. Mirzon and Ya. O. Rubinchik designed and built the modern residential building No. 29 “with household services.” The huge building’s main facade faces Dekabristov Street (formerly Officers’ Street). It was one of the first communal houses “with communal living”; new planning solutions were explored here. In 1934, according to the project of Petersburg and Leningrad architect I. A. Pretro, the left part of the seven-story residential complex (now house No. 29a) was built, and just before the war, the right part was laid, completed only in 1950. The building at Moika Embankment, 102 was built according to a standard project to house a kindergarten in 1961.
The Lithuanian Castle was described in literature; the most detailed description of the prison’s internal arrangement and regime is contained in N. S. Leskov’s essays “Passion Saturday in Prison” and “Behind the Prison Gates,” published in “Northern Bee” in 1862. One of the most curious sources is the novel by V. V. Krestovsky, “Petersburg Slums. A Book about the Fed and the Hungry,” written between 1864 and 1866. It is known that the writer personally gathered material for the novel by infiltrating the most secret dens of swindlers disguised as a passportless person and also used materials provided by the legendary detective I. D. Putilin. Krestovsky wrote about this place: “If anyone imagined our prison as something like Newgate or the Bastille, they would be terribly mistaken. Its appearance does not bear the grand gloomy character evoked by memories and antiquity. Our prison, on the contrary, is distinguished by a gray, official, barracks-like color of the everyday established type. One wants to say that ‘everything is fine’ when looking at these endlessly boring straight lines, whose precision reminds one only of the clear rhythm of rifle drills ‘one-two!’ This very officialness weighs on your soul with some sluggish, boring oppression.”
In 1864, V. N. Nikitin, having examined the cells at all 12 police precincts, published his work “Prison and Exile. 1560–1880,” dedicating a chapter to the Prison Castle.
F. M. Dostoevsky used information in his 1876 diary essays that he gathered when visiting the juvenile offenders’ department in May 1874. This department existed in the Lithuanian prison castle in Petersburg from 1871 and was transformed into an independent correctional institution in December 1875. Before this reorganization, it was practically no different from an ordinary criminal prison; juvenile offenders freely mingled with adults, education and rehabilitation work were not established, and vicious habits flourished among adolescents. The essay was titled “Colony of Juvenile Offenders. Gloomy Human Specimens. Reformation of Vicious Souls into Innocent Ones. The Best Recognized Means for This. Little and Bold Friends of Humanity.”
Among the Lithuanian Castle’s prisoners was the future writer V. G. Korolenko. In 1879, he was arrested for connections with populists and distributing proclamations printed in an underground printing house. After several months in the Lithuanian Castle, Korolenko was exiled to Vyatka Province by “administrative order.” In 1932, the “Notebook” for 1879, which the author kept in places of detention he passed through, was published. In his later years (1906–1921), Korolenko worked on a large autobiographical work “The Story of My Contemporary,” in which a whole chapter “In the Lithuanian Castle” described his stay there.
Among the little-studied sources is the anonymous work “Life of the Prison in the Sixties. Personal Observations and Notes.” The author, a prison official who served in the Petersburg transit prison and Lithuanian prison castle, described the prison administration and prison rules in detail.
In 1896, the “Historical Herald” published the memoirs of former bookseller N. I. Sveshnikov, “Memoirs of a Lost Man,” which included a chapter devoted to the author’s stay in the Lithuanian Castle.
In 1918, fiction writer and publisher of the magazine “Independent,” A. S. Roslavlev, published the story “Angel of the Lithuanian Castle,” based on one of the legends about the Lithuanian Castle. In N. Svechin’s novel “Locked Up” (2021), the action takes place in the Lithuanian Castle.
The very first image of the Lithuanian Castle (1789) is found in the works of painter Karl Friedrich Knappe, an academician of the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. In the painting, the artist depicted the castle in its original appearance created by I. E. Starov.
In “National Images of Industrialists, Drawn from Life in Saint Petersburg,” published in 1799 by Ya. I. Basin, there is an interesting image of Starov’s castle, accompanied by the comment: “Directly behind the canal is the Bastille or new edicule, surrounded by a high stone wall with five round towers.” In 1881, N. A. Yaroshenko completed the painting “At the Lithuanian Castle.” The painting’s subject was inspired by the trial of Vera Zasulich, who shot the Petersburg governor F. F. Trepov and was acquitted by a jury. The painting was presented at the IX Traveling Exhibition on the day of Tsar Alexander II’s assassination, March 1, 1881. The painting, which caused a scandal, was removed from the exhibition, and the author (a young artillery officer) was placed under house arrest for a week, visited for interrogation by the Minister of Internal Affairs Loris-Melikov.
The scandalous work was removed from the exhibition catalog, and no reproductions were made. The painting’s further fate was tragic: entrusted to acquaintances for safekeeping, it was carelessly rolled up and destroyed. Only a few sketches and a description published in the newspaper “Russian Gazette” remain: “On a canvas one sazhen square is depicted the Lithuanian Castle. Near this gloomy building are only two figures. In the foreground, a girl dressed in a black cashmere dress and a short drap coat looks anxiously at a boarded-up window; her face is very expressive. The other figure is a sentry. He stands by a lantern, indifferent to what the girl thinks and who is in the prison.”
In 1879, V. G. Korolenko, imprisoned in the Lithuanian Castle, sketched his prison cell from life. The prison cells and police precincts drawn by the writer were especially valued by the famous Russian prison historian Gernet.
In the early 20th century, A. P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva addressed the Lithuanian Castle theme, creating a series of watercolors and lithographs showing views of the Lithuanian Castle in perspective from the Moika. From the same period is a notable watercolor by E. N. Stravinskaya, wife of Y. F. Stravinsky, who lived on Kryukov Canal opposite the Lithuanian Castle. It depicts a winter landscape with a rare angle of the Lithuanian Castle, Lithuanian Market, and the dome of the Synagogue. Their works captured the image of the Lithuanian Castle before it was burned down.
A series of graphic and painted works dedicated to the events of the February Revolution depicted the capture and destruction of the prison building.
The period of depicting the Lithuanian Castle in ruins lasted from 1917 to the 1920s. One of the most poetic images of the Lithuanian Castle belongs to A. N. Benois, who painted the Lithuanian Castle from the side of Matveev Bridge (formerly Prison Bridge). I. I. Vaulin (1887–1937), author of a series of drawings “Old Petersburg” in pastel, charcoal, and pencil, including images of the Lithuanian Castle. In 1930, under the auspices of the Council of the “Old Petersburg — New Leningrad” society, an exhibition of I. I. Vaulin’s works was held at the Academy of Arts. These works did not gain wide recognition because the artist was repressed in 1937 and his works confiscated by the NKVD.
Famous graphic artist and Academy of Arts teacher P. A. Shilingovsky created a series of drawings and watercolor sheets of the Lithuanian Castle, united in a series called “Ruins of the Revolution.” Equally striking was the depiction of the ruined castle by Leningrad architect M. M. Sinyaver in four tempera drawings, first published in 1935 in the “Yearbook of the Society of Architect-Artists.”
Sources:
https://peterburg.center/story/litovskiy-zamok-peterburgskaya-kolomna.html
https://www.citywalls.ru/house5054.html
