Museums of Russia: Arsenal Hall of the Gatchina Palace opened after restoration

The opening of the restored Arsenal Hall of the Gatchina Palace took place in the Gatchina State Museum-Reserve.

The Arsenal Hall is the most spacious room of the Gatchina imperial residence. It is on the ground floor of the Arsenal square and is faced with a private garden and courtyard. This hall was designed by the architect Roman Ivanovich Kuzmin in the mid-XIX century. Thanks to the massive stone columns, which bear the ceiling, the room is visually divided into several interconnected chambers.

In 1941, the German occupants arranged a garage in the Arsenal Hall. In the post-war years, it housed the production facilities of the Electronstandard Institute. Detailed scientific restoration began only in 2011; it lasted eight years. It took another two years to furnish the restored Arsenal Hall with items related to the reign of Alexander III.

The Arsenal Hall gained three paintings by A. I. Charlemagne, devoted to the Italian and Swiss campaigns of the Russian army under the command of Alexander Suvorov.

The Arsenal Hall of the Gatchina Palace showcases the famous Hunting Service, produced by the Imperial Porcelain Factory during Catherine II's reign, Alexander II and Alexander III.

The chandeliers and wall lamps of the Arsenal Hall were recreated from the preserved originals. There were restored a sliding hill and a swing boat. The restoration work was based on pre-war photographs and watercolours by Eduard Hau.

The Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve gave for temporary storage the famous bronze sculpture by Nikolai Liberikh Lisinsky Bear, exhibited in the Arsenal Hall until 1941. It also provided two sculptural compositions devoted to hunting from the rooms of Alexander II in the Gatchina Palace and other items of the applied art collections.

The Pavlovsk Museum-Reserve donated trophies - the heads of an elk and a bison, which were also exhibited in the Arsenal Hall until 1941. Part of the trophies for the exposition was provided by the Zoological Museum. The State Hermitage Museum and the Pavlovsk Museum-Reserve gave 76 copies of M. Zichy's watercolours; 6 copies of A. Popov's drawings and a copy of D. Rossov's watercolour. Also, the stand constructions involved the scenes from M. Zichy's watercolours from the collections of the Peterhof Museum-Reserve.

Glass stands with information about the exposition and multimedia equipment were designed by specialists of the "Svoya Shkola" Museum Design Bureau.