The Palace in the Tsar’s Garden (today City Garden) was commissioned by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in 1744. The baroque project was designed by her court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli (there are other works of his in Kyiv – St. Andrew’s Church). Under the leadership of the Muscovite Ivan Michurin, as well as a group of other architects, the palace was built by 1752.
The Empress did not find time to visit the palace because of state affairs, and in 1762 she died suddenly from an unknown medicine of those times of illness. The first royal lady to stay at the Mariinsky Palace was Catherine II, who visited Kyiv in 1787. Here she hosted the Venezuelan politician Francisco Miranda, the future liberator from the Spanish colonial system.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the palace was the residence of the governor-generals of the Kyiv province.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Royal Palace burned down as a result of a series of fires. Half a century later, in 1870, Alexander II commissioned the architect Karl Mayevsky to reconstruct the palace based on old plans and paintings. After restoration, it was renamed Mariinsky in honor of Empress Maria Alexandrovna. At her request, a large park was laid out near the southern side of the palace – Mariinsky Park.
During the First World War, Empress Maria Feodorovna moved to the Mariinsky Palace, who oversees the dispatch of ambulance trains and the treatment of the wounded who arrived. She spends 2 years there until the abdication of her son Emperor Nicholas II, which she learns about in the palace.
The Mariinsky Palace was considered a residence for members of the imperial family visiting Kyiv until 1917.
During the Civil War, the Mariinsky Palace was used as a military headquarters. In the late 1920s, the building belonged to an agricultural school, later it became a museum. During the Great Patriotic War, the palace was badly damaged and was restored in the late 1940s. Another major restoration took place in the 1980s. Since 2007, the Mariinsky Palace, which is currently the ceremonial residence of the President of Ukraine, has been under reconstruction. In January 2018, the grand opening of the Mariinsky Palace took place after an 11-year restoration of its former beauty – both external and internal.
Where is the Mariinsky Palace located?
Mikhail Grushevsky street, 5A
(you can get to the Mariinsky Palace only with an excursion, which is carried out by Kyiv travel agencies)