Mikhailovsky Castle (Engineer’s Castle)

A much greater Summer Palace used to stand at the south end of the Summer Garden. But Rastrelli’s fairy-tale wooden creation for Empress Elizabeth was knocked down in the 1790s to make way for the bulky Mikhailovsky Castle. The son of Catherine the Great, Tsar Paul I, was born in the wooden palace and he wanted his own residence on the same spot. He had the current edifice built complete with defensive moat as he (quite rightly) feared assassination. But this erratic, cruel tsar only got 40 days in his new abode before he was suffocated in his bedroom in 1801. The style is a bizarre take on a medieval castle, quite unlike any other building in the city. In 1823 it became a military engineering school (hence its more common name, Engineer’s Castle, or Inzhenirny Zamok), whose most famous pupil was Fyodor Dostoe­vsky. There is a movement, however, to use the original name, Mikhailovsky Castle (not to be confused with Mikhailovsky Palace, the Russian Museum’s main building). As a wing of the Russian Museum, the castle is used mainly for temporary exhibitions. A few finely restored state rooms include the lavish burgundy throne room of the Tsar’s wife Maria Fyodorovna.