Fontanka River Embankment, 118, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 190068
In 1791, the owners of the two-story stone house on the Fontanka became the Derzhavin couple. The building remained unfinished, and Gavriil Romanovich asked his architect friend Lvov to complete the construction and carry out the interior decoration. He also landscaped the estate grounds, planting a huge number of shrubs and trees.
The plans included building greenhouses and hothouses for cultivating heat-loving and exotic fruits and plants.
To start the construction work, Derzhavin was forced to mortgage several of his villages and impose strict control over all expenses. His wife diligently worked on arranging the family estate but did not live to enjoy the warmth of her home: she died in 1794. By the time of her death, the house was built and the interior decoration was completed. Two service buildings—a kitchen and a stable—were erected on the estate grounds. Their architect was Pilnikov.
For 25 years, the poet’s house remained a kind of foundation of Russian culture at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. A theater was also built on the Derzhavin estate.
The house and estate grounds did not change their appearance until the owners’ deaths. In 1816, Gavriil Romanovich passed away, and 26 years later his second wife, Darya Alekseevna, died.
After her death, the estate had no owner for several years. But in 1846, the house with the grounds was acquired by the Roman Catholic Spiritual College. Immediately, the estate was replanned. Many buildings were allocated for offices, archives, and staff rooms.
The leaders of these works were architects Gornostayev and Sobolshchikov. According to their project, an additional floor was added to the house, the colonnade was removed, and the facades’ appearance was changed. The service buildings were rebuilt, the staircase was removed, new partitions were made, thus increasing the number of rooms. A ceiling was installed in the Conversation Hall, and the columns and choir lofts were completely demolished.
Later, the appearance of the Derzhavin estate was altered many times. The most noticeable change was the addition of third floors to the two wings in 1901, done by Shishko.
From 1918, the former Derzhavin estate entered a difficult period. The new authorities could not decide for several years how to use the house, which by that year was again ownerless.
In 1924, the late poet’s house became an ordinary residential building with apartments. New rearrangements were made, and almost all the surviving artistic decoration was destroyed. Ten years later, nothing remained of the ponds, and post-war plantings of trees and shrubs were carried out chaotically, without any system.
In 2003, the museum of G. R. Derzhavin and Russian literature of his time was opened in the restored Central Building of the mansion.
Since the museum’s opening, the Central Building was connected by semicircular covered galleries with the Kitchen and Stable buildings. Gradually, the Home Theater and the Central Greenhouse were restored.
The museum has 16 halls. Visitors can see furniture and decorative art objects, paintings, and graphics from the poet’s era. Books and manuscripts of Gavriil Romanovich’s contemporaries play a special role. The effect of the owner’s “presence” is created by the portraits of Derzhavin displayed throughout. In the dining room, one can see a portrait of Darya Alekseevna Derzhavina, the poet’s second wife.
One of the main rooms of the museum is the poet’s study, recreated using a drawing by Kozhevnikov. The entire interior was designed according to the poet’s idea: trick cabinets that disguised entrance doors, a table with a lifting mechanism, a sofa with nightstands on either side. All of this was faithfully recreated.
Sources:
https://kudago.com/spb/place/muzei-derzhavina/
