Governor's Palace (military governor's house-palace, Governor's House) — a three-story building in the northern part of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, erected in 1837–1841 as the residence of the Nizhny Novgorod military governor.[1] A federal-level cultural heritage site.[2] Since 1992, the palace has housed the Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum: its permanent exhibition of Russian art is displayed here.[2][3]

Reconstruction of the Kremlin under Nicholas I

In the first half of the 19th century, Nizhny Novgorod underwent the largest urban replanning in its history. On 30 June 1833, under the direction of Provincial Architect I. Ye. Yefimov, a Construction Commission was established, tasked among other things with improving connections between the upper part of the city and the Yarmarka across the Oka. The Kremlin itself was substantially rebuilt: twenty-eight residential buildings, the remains of the ancient metropolitan's residence, and the Holy Spirit Monastery were demolished, and on the cleared land plans were drawn up for a military governor's house with outbuildings, a guardhouse block, an arsenal, and a public garden.

Nicholas I, who arrived in 1834, approved the projects, personally sketched the layout of the governor's house with imperial apartments and a church, and ordered Governor-General M. P. Butturlin to transform the Construction Commission into a Construction Committee for the Improvement of the City of Nizhny Novgorod. The committee was headed by Engineer-Colonel P. D. Gotman, with V. P. Stremoukhov appointed as his deputy; the works were funded from the treasury and from additional levies on Yarmarka trade. In 1836, the designs were sent to St. Petersburg for approval, and permission to begin immediately was granted. The transformations of 1834–1839 were the most significant in the Kremlin's centuries-long history.

Construction

Until 1841, the military governor was the only senior official in Nizhny Novgorod who had no residence in the Kremlin; administrative offices had stood here since the 17th century.

The first design for the palace was drawn up in 1835 by P. D. Gotman, but the emperor rejected it for excessive ornamentation.[1] The final design in the Late Classicist style was produced by the St. Petersburg architect Iosif Ivanovich Charlemagne; construction supervision was carried out by Anton Lavrentyevich Leer.[2][1] In 1837, the foundations were laid and the walls raised in rough form, but a year later Leer quarreled with Governor Butturlin and was dismissed — work was continued by architects A. I. Sheffer and A. Ye. Turmyshev. At the close of 1841, a report on the completion of construction was dispatched to St. Petersburg.

The palace complex comprised a three-story governor's house, a wing, a guardhouse building, an arsenal, and a public garden.[2] The first floor housed the governor's reception rooms, the second contained imperial apartments for use during royal visits, and the third served as the residential quarters of the governor's family.[2] The domestic Church of the Holy Spirit was consecrated on 18 September 1845.[1]

The façade, austere and strictly in keeping with the tastes of Nicholas I, was described by contemporaries as "dry and drilled, like a soldier on parade."

Landslides and the first concrete

The palace had been built too close to the edge of the Kremlin hill, and within five years of the completion of construction cracks appeared in the foundations and cellars. In 1846, engineer A. I. Delvig — known as the builder of the city's first water supply system and fountain — used concrete for the first time in the city's construction practice when filling those cracks.[2][1]

Major renovations were carried out in 1885 and 1894–1896: at that time, according to a design by architect N. I. Ivanov, a metal canopy on cast-iron columns and oval carriage ramps were added above the main entrance. In 1906 the foundations had to be replaced entirely.[1]

Residents and guests

The first to take up residence in the palace was Governor-General Buturlin. A well-known confusion surrounds him: Alexander Pushkin did indeed stay with Buturlin during his two-day visit to Nizhny Novgorod in 1833, but at the former governor's house on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya — the Kremlin palace had not yet been built at the time, and the poet visited the Kremlin to work in the archive while researching the history of the Pugachev Rebellion.[2]

The palace is associated with the Decembrists A. N. Muravyov and I. A. Annenkov. In 1858, Governor Muravyov held a reception here in honor of Alexandre Dumas père, at which the French writer met Annenkov and his wife Pauline Gebl.[1] Dumas had first heard their story eighteen years earlier from his friend, the fencing master Augustin Grisier, and used it as the basis for his novel The Fencing Master; after their exile, the Annenkovs lived in Nizhny Novgorod, where the meeting took place.

In the 1860s, part of the building was occupied by the city's first public art school, opened at the initiative of photographer Andrey Karelin and architect Lev Dal.[2]

The Governor's Garden

The garden adjoining the military governor's residence occupied the northeastern part of the Kremlin: to the north and northeast it was bounded by the fortress wall, and on the remaining sides by a fence running along the Ilyinsky Descent, abutting the guardhouse, the governor's house, and the service buildings.[4] Nicholas I issued orders for the construction of the palace and the laying out of the garden during his visits to the city in 1834–1836, and as early as 1836 the court gardener Peltzel was dispatched to Nizhny Novgorod "to draw up a design for a garden on the site indicated by His Majesty."[4]

According to the documents, it was to be an English-style manor park. The design called for planting two hundred fragrant poplars and fifty silver poplars, one thousand each of linden trees, maples, rowans, and oaks, five hundred ash trees, fifty spruces, two hundred hazel bushes, and two and a half thousand ornamental shrubs.[4]

Peltzel's regrading of the Georgievskaya Hill slope was carried out, according to archival documents, "in the complete absence of any technical reasoning or knowledge of construction": the system of stone and wooden pipes and channels that diverted groundwater beyond the Kremlin's boundaries was destroyed, and the water from underground springs spread beneath the embankments, dammed by the foundations of the fortress wall.[4] This triggered landslides and the deterioration of the lower section of the wall. The consequences were being dealt with for decades: in the 1850s under a design by architect L. V. Fostikov, and in the 1860s under architect D. Nebolsin.[4]

By the end of the nineteenth century only the upper portion of the garden had been properly maintained; the lower section remained neglected. After the February Revolution of 1917 the garden was opened to the public; under Soviet power the grounds fell into disuse, and in the postwar years they were re-terraced during landslide-prevention work.[4]

The upper terrace of the garden was renovated for the 800th anniversary of Nizhny Novgorod in 2021, and in 2024 work began on the remainder of the grounds — an amphitheater, flower beds, and a physic garden are being laid out between the Ivanovskaya and Borisoglebskaya towers, retaining walls, staircases, and pathways are being restored, and an automatic irrigation system is being installed. The contract, worth nearly 284.5 million rubles, is being executed by the company DiRON. Work that was originally due to be completed in 2025 has been pushed back to the second half of 2026: additional slope reinforcement proved necessary, along with reconstruction of failing retaining walls and an upgrade of the drainage system.[5]

The Soviet decades

After the revolution the palace was renamed the Palace of Freedom.[1] The plasterwork cherubs were replaced by alabaster hammers and sickles, and the ballroom was partitioned in two to create offices and a conference room. The building housed the provincial committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), then the regional party committee and the city committee of the Komsomol, while the ground floor held a museum of the history of the regional party organization.[2]

The Art Museum

Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum is one of the oldest in Russia: it opened on 25 June 1896 in the Dmitrievskaya Tower of the Kremlin, in time for the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition. Before the Revolution, the museum was under the patronage of the Imperial Academy of Arts and was enriched by its gifts and private donations; under Soviet Power it was replenished with nationalized noble collections.[2]

In 1992 the museum was given the former governor's palace.[2][1] Today it houses the permanent exhibition "Russian Art" — from ancient icons to the Silver Age: seventy-two icons, among them the miracle-working icon "The Praise of the Mother of God," paintings by Levitan, Repin, Aivazovsky, Serov, and Kustodiев, a hall dedicated to the Arzamas school, two halls of open-storage displays featuring Russian decorative silver and objects by Fabergé, and on the third floor more than eighty works of the Silver Age.[3]

Restoration for the 800th Anniversary

In the run-up to the city's 800th anniversary, the palace was fully restored for the first time since 1992. Superfluous Soviet-era partition walls were removed, all engineering systems were completely replaced, new shelving equipment was installed in the storage facilities along with climate-control systems to preserve the paintings, the decorative stucco and parquet floors were restored, and the lighting was replaced. Fragments of historic ceilings and bricked-up openings that were uncovered during the works were preserved and left visible. A café was opened on the second floor, and a bookshop and a reading room for lectures and conferences were added.[6]

The works cost more than 200 million rubles, and the exhibition space increased by approximately one third.[1]

See also

Sources

  1. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — The Governor's House: how world masterpieces came to the emperor's chambers (archive)
  2. rusarch.ru — RusArch — Kucherova T. V. The Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin (archive)
  3. artmuseumnn.ru — Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum — NGSAM. Russian Art
  4. opentextnn.ru — Otkrytyy Tekst — Yeremin I. O. The Governor's Garden in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin (historical background) (archive)
  5. GIPERNN — Completion of the Governor's Garden landscaping in the Kremlin pushed back to 2026 (archive)
  6. nizhny800.ru — Nizhny 800 — The Military Governor's House: restoration for the 800th anniversary (archive)