Maritime Cabinet of Peterhof Monplaisir

Monplaisir Palace Maritime Cabinet

From this office opens an extensive panorama of the sea. Viden Kronstadt, St. Petersburg.

The office is located in the northern part of the palace facing the Gulf of Finland. From here, Peter I loved to watch the ships going along the forward to the new capital of Russia.

Peter said that “the sea air of Monplesir heals better than any medicine for sores.” He sleeps in Montplesire like nowhere else: I see the sea and ships in my dreams.

In the painting by the artist V. Serov, Peter is depicted with a telescope, watching the sea from the window of the naval office.

The sea theme is also present in the decoration of the office. The walls of the Naval Cabinet are decorated with oak panels and paintings of eighteenth-century ships, giving the cabinet a resemblance to a captain's cabin.

Delphi tiles in the study are decorated with images of sixteen (13?) types of ships that existed in Peter's time. This is a kind of reminder that it was under Peter the Great that Russia became a great maritime power.

Despite the small size, the office has three, not two windows, as in other rooms. All these windows with characteristic oak frames in a small rectangular cage facing, of course, the bay.

The ceiling in the study, decorated with a painted plafond, made by Philip Pilman in 1719, is impressive. In the center of the plafond, the author did not accidentally depict monkeys - in the XVIII century, these funny animals were associated with sea travel.

Notable is the Tula metal casket with a crown, Peter I’s monogram and cast sculptural details, among which are the heads of Peter’s soldiers in triangulars. In its manufacture, according to legend, Peter himself took part and the casket was in this interior before the Great Patriotic War. The casket belonged to Peter the Great, as evidenced by the emperor's crown on the front wall of the upper drawer.

Under Peter the Great, a new tradition appeared in Russia – smoking tobacco. On the table are ceramic tubes brought from Holland. These are the pipes the emperor loved to use. Next to the pipes there is a bone grater for tobacco, a piece of mushroom for smoking a pipe, two Dutch snuffboxes.

The decoration of the office is a carved chair of the early XVIII century, decorated with intricate relief ornament, the image of the Russian coat of arms and monograms of Peter I. Seven such chairs as authentic Peter's relics were in the Summer Palace of Elizabeth Petrovna; under Paul they were transported to the Priory Palace, and then transferred to the Gatchina Palace, for the study of Alexander III in the Arsenal Kara. The only remaining chair found a worthy place in the office of the founder of Peterhof.

About the interest of Pyotr Alekseevich to the marine business and exact sciences are reminded in the modern exposition of the office placed on the shelves of the cabinet-supplier books and a spyglass. The Marine Office also stores a desktop, clock, navigation and measuring instruments.

In the Maritime Cabinet, Peter the Great spent his free time playing chess and most often played with John Chrysanfovich Bitka, a palace priest who accompanied the Tsar on the Second Foreign Journey of 1716-1717.

Nearby there is a modest bedroom of Peter, where his personal belongings are also presented to the attention of visitors. The Bedroom can only be accessed through the Marine Office or the Secretary's Office.

By the way, the last time Peter the Great and his wife Catherine the First visited Monplaisir in October 1724.

Interestingly, after the death of the first Russian emperor in Monplezier in the XVIII-XIX centuries, diplomatic receptions, meetings with foreign ambassadors, solemn lunches and dinners, tea parties in a narrow family circle were arranged. The palace was used as a residential building only until the 30s of the XVIII century, and in the subsequent period all the monarchs of the Romanov House treated #Montplesir as a memorial associated with the name of Peter the Great. Here his things were stored: clothes, furniture, paintings, household items.