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Royal Court Carriage Exhibition (Pushkin)

7 Sadovaya Street, Pushkin, tel.: +7 812 465-20-24, +7 812 465-94-24.

What makes this exhibition especially valuable is the fact that it occupies the historical building of the former Imperial Duty Stables, which was built in 1824 to a design by the architects Vasily Stasov and Smaragd Shustov.

The exhibition presents carriages created by famous Russian and Western European masters in the 18th and 19th centuries.

As early as in the 19th century, it was recognised that the collection of court carriages was of some historical and artistic value. In 1860, Emperor Alexander II opened the Saint Petersburg Museum of Court Stables, which had been conceived as early as during the reign of Emperor Nicolas I. For the purpose of keeping the court carriages, a special two-storey building was constructed in Saint Petersburg to a design of Pyotr Sadovnikov.

In the late 1920s, the museum was disbanded. Some part of the carriage collection was transferred to the State Hermitage, while 52 carriages were handed over to the Catherine Palace Museum, which had already possessed a collection of 23 carriages. Until the 1930s, the carriage collection of Tsarskoye Selo occupied the Cameron Gallery, the Grotto and the former Duty Stables.

Having survived the Leningrad Blockade (now Saint Petersburg) by German troops during the Second World War (beneath the vaults of the Hermitage's Hanging Garden), a part of the collection was again transferred to the Catherine Palace Museum in 1969. Most carriages were restored. In 1971, an exhibition of 14 carriages was opened in the Cameron Gallery. Before the museum was opened in the former Duty Stables, new restoration works were performed; 20 carriages were restored during the works.

Currently, the exhibition displays various ancient carriages (coaches, phaetons, cabriolets, and sledges) that were used in the 18th and 19th centuries for solemn state ceremonies including coronations, the grandest kind of ceremonies at the Russian Imperial court.

The exhibition features three carriages created by the famous Saint Petersburg master carriage maker Johann Buckendall for Empress Catherine the Great in the early 18th century; the carriages impress with their huge size, magnificent gilt carving and rich interior decorations.

No less remarkable, for the great mastery of work, are the mid-19th century carriages produced by the Court Carriage Institution; especially, the ten carriages produced for the coronation of Emperor Alexander II by the Saint Petersburg manufacturers Tatsky, Frobelius brothers, and Yakovlev brothers.

The collection of Tsarskoye Selo also preserved carriages produced by the carriage factory of Nellis and uniquely designed carriages produced by the factory of Ivan Breitigham in 1873.

A special place in the exhibition is occupied by the carriage that was carrying Emperor Alexander II when he was mortally wounded by a bomb thrown by a member of the Narodnaya Volia ("The People's Will") organisation, on 1st March 1881. The last room of the exhibition contains a sledge rich decorations of which and mastery of work make it at least as valuable as the other state carriages. As a Russian saying goes, "A man is known by his sledge."

Among the exhibits, there is a sledge that belonged to Emperor Paul I and a ten-seat sledge designed for taking ladies-in-waiting of Empress Catherine the Great for a ride and produced by the master carriage maker Johann Buckendall in 1793.

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