Where did the General Staff come from?

In St. Petersburg, there are phenomena that at first glance seem inexplicable, but, in fact, the answer to the question “Why so?” lies on the surface.

This now Palace Square has a strict ceremonial appearance, nothing superfluous, the slender lines of the General Staff clearly outline its borders, and on the other hand - the Hermitage, a richly decorated imperial residence. And for almost the entire 18th century it was not the most well-groomed area near the Winter Palace. Opposite the royal house stood buildings where merchants and ambassadors of foreign states lived. It didn't look too neat.

The design of the Palace Square ensemble began in the time of Catherine II, when Felten built a single facade of the building opposite. If you approach from the Moika side to the square, it seems that the General Staff building consists of one thin wall with windows. In fact, this is a sharp angle, like none of the St. Petersburg buildings. And he appeared under Catherine. Rossi simply built his General Staff into the layout of the old buildings. He who designed the Palace Felten could have avoided this angle. In such cases, the corner of the building is usually rounded. But Felten decided to go along with Wednesday and deliberately made the silhouette of the building so rough. And there's a reason. It is believed that St. Petersburg was the first city in Europe, where the geometric rigor of street planning was applied (remember the lines on Vasilievsky Island). The curvature of the coastline did not matter: the prospect simply stopped, no intentional straightening or rounding.

On the other hand, in the 1730s, another perspective was built into the city building, the Roman ray (Nevsky, Voznesensky, Gorokhovaya, Palace and Admiralty). This is the only example in the history of architecture of the intersection of two systems. The corner of the General Staff came from the collision of these systems. Russia only emphasized this struggle between the two architectural environments and the need to build a new architectural ensemble into the old format.