The Tirkish Bath pavilion (an ensemble of the Catherine Park)

Categories / Tsarskoe Selo and town of Pushkin. The digital chronological reference book/Monuments of history and culture
The East architecture touches and the name of the Turkish Bath pavilion, occupying the foreground in the Great Pond panorama, remember about the Adrianople Peace treaty with Turkey in 1829. The pavilion was erected on the order of Emperor Nicholas I in 1850-1852 according to the design of I. Monighetti. 37.838 Rubles were required on the architect’s estimate for building according to the imperial ordered design. But the Emperor allocated only 30.000 Rubles for building and he ordered to Monighetti to “dodge”. Monighetti fulfilled the Imperial command, he gave the work order , for the specified sum, to the Italian architect Kamutstsi. The pavilion never used as a bath, it was a typical park pavilion for resting. The pavilion suitably completed Catherine’s tradition of constructing monuments of the battle glory in the Catherine Park. A peaked small tower with a crescent, remembered minaret, the main dome, the entrance like a niche-mihrab make the pavilion looking like a mosque. The dome was decorated with relief planer pattern, made of gilded copper, framing the round many-coloured windows. Inside there are many-coloured encrustations made of natural and artificial marble, stalactite pattern, bright marble mosaic with an eastern pattern, a marble basin of the fountain in the center of the hall, carved Olonets marble attracting the attention. The original details of the marble decoration of a Turkish sultaness bath, brought to the Emperor from Adrianople as trophies, were used in decorating the interior. Marble plaques with Turkish ligature signs, murmurous “fountains of tears” , placed on walls, bring Turkish motifs into the Mauritanian style of the decoration. Semenova Galina Victorovna
Camuzzi Augustin Matveevich
Monighetti Ippolito Antonovich
Nicholas I, Emperor
Ekaterininsky Park/Pushkin, town