#masterpieces A palace-fortress for the Empress's favorite
Imagine: Catherine the Great gives her beloved Grigory Orlov not another opulent Baroque palace, but... a castle. A true, austere one, as if transported from the English countryside—with angular towers and walls of Pudost limestone that changes color from dawn to dusk. In 1766, the architect Antonio Rinaldi went against the grain and built in Gatchina not a residence, but a dream fortress—with a Clock and Signal Tower, as if the palace were preparing to defend itself from an enemy siege, not to host balls.
Then Orlov died, and the palace passed to Paul I, a man enamored of all things military and Prussian. The architect Brenna transformed the interiors into a kind of military headquarters, adding austerity and discipline even to the state rooms. A vast landscaped park with lakes and pavilions—one of the finest in Russia—sprawled around it. In 1944, German troops nearly wiped the palace off the face of the earth; restorers are still working on it to this day, more than eighty years later.