For the first time in eighty years, the reconstructed Private Rooms of Empress Catherine II in the Zubov Wing of the Catherine Palace receive visitors from 25 December 2024.

Completely destroyed during the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941-45, Catherine's Private Rooms are a masterpiece of the era of late eighteenth-century Classicism. They were created by the architects Charles Cameron and Giacomo Quarenghi and include the Chinese Hall, the Domed Hall, the Blue Study or 'Snuffbox', the Silver Study, the Mirror Study, the Bedchamber, the Raphael Room and the Dressing Room.

The eight rooms demonstrated "simplicity with taste", with a minimum of gilded carvings, rich fabrics and carpets. Their refined beauty was largely created by unusual interior design materials such as blue, milk and amethyst glass, silver, mirrors and porcelain. Deemed impossible for nearly eight decades, the reconstruction became achievable thanks to new methods of reviving old techniques.The unprecedented large-scale restoration project The Private Space of Catherine II took five years to complete, and was made possible thanks to the financial support of PJSC Gazprom, the Russian state-owned multinational energy corporation headquartered in St Petersburg and earlier involved in our restoration of the Chapel and the Lyons Hall in the Catherine Palace.

The Tsarskoselskaya Amber Workshop, whose specialists brought back to life the Amber Room, the Lyons Hall, the Chapel of the Catherine Palace and the Agate Rooms, assembled a dedicated team of over 200 restorers capable of twenty types of works including molding, gilding, wood carving, painting and casting. They hand-crafted more than 1,000 sq metres of glass and 474 sq metres of parquet.

The restoration process and pre-restoration preparations were combined with thorough work by the museum's research team that perused archival documents and publications looking for painted and photoed images of the objects to be reconstructed, and carefully studied the surviving fragments of decoration. Our restoration council supervised reconstruction of each decorative detail.

The reconstruction of twenty-seven decorative porcelain objects for the Bedchamber of Catherine II was commissioned by the museum from St Petersburg's Imperial Porcelain Manufactory. Their masters produced twelve large round and rectangular plaques for the walls and fifteen small relief medallions for the fireplace, all made of white and blue two-layer bisque (unglazed porcelain).

One hundred and fifty-five lacquer wall panels for the Chinese Hall are re-created in China.

Work on the reconstruction of decorative elements in the Private Rooms of Empress Catherine II will continue into the next year of 2025. After the installation of lacquer panels in the Chinese Hall, the interiors will appear in full splendour in 2026. Meanwhile, the Chinese Hall showcases authentic masterpieces of Chinese art from the museum's reserve collection, which were on display in this interior before 1917.