Ropsha

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ropsha (Russian: Ропша) is a settlement in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, situated about 20 km south of Peterhof and 49 km west of Saint Petersburg, at an elevation of 80 metres above sea level.

The settlement was first mentioned in the documents of the Novgorod Republic in the 15th century, when its name was spelled as "Khrapsha". It passed to Sweden following the Treaty of Stolbovo but was recaptured by Peter the Great during the Great Northern War. Upon hearing about the curative properties of Ropsha's mineral springs, the tsar planned to make it his summer retreat; a timber palace and small church were built there. Subsequently, when he discovered a more favourable location of Strelna and contrived a system of pipes to bring water from the Ropsha heights to the fountain cascades projected in Peterhof, he abandoned his previous plans for Ropsha and made a present of it to his senior associate, Prince Fyodor Romodanovsky, or the "Caesar-Pope" as he was wont to style him.

Prince Romodanovsky was an old man of harsh disposition, who kept tame bears in his palace to scare infrequent visitors. Being in charge of Peter's secret police, he would bring political prisoners to a torture chamber arranged in Ropsha Palace and their screams would spook the neighbourhood. Despite macabre stories of his cruelty and misdeeds, a neighbour, Chancellor Golovkin, found it prudent to arrange the marriage of his son to Romodanovsky's daughter. After the 1722 wedding, Ropsha Palace was overhauled and expanded under the supervision of Golovkin's friend, Ivan Yeropkin.

In connection with the Lopukhina Conspiracy, the Golovkins fell into disgrace and their possessions were seized by Empress Elizabeth, who asked a court architect, Bartolomeo Rastrelli, to prepare plans for a new palace at Ropsha. As Rastrelli was busy with other projects, his designs for Ropsha were never executed. Towards the end of her reign, Empress granted the estate to her nephew and heir, the future Peter III of Russia. It was there that he was brought under guard after the coup d'etat of 1762 and it was there that he was murdered under shady circumstances.

Later the same year, Catherine the Great resolved that "Ropsha is not to be mentioned again" and presented the ill-famed place to her lover, Count Orlov. The reputation of the manor was too sinister for any improvement on the grounds to be effected and Orlov soon ceded the palace to Admiral Ivan Chernyshev, who sold it for 12,000 roubles to Ivan Lazarev, an Armenian jeweller. It is widely believed that Lazarev was just a figurehead who acted at the behest of Catherine's son Paul. The latter, unable to overtly acquire the grounds for fear of his mother's ire, was still drawn to the place where his father had been murdered.

It was only after Catherine's death that Paul took over Ropsha from Lazarev. During their joint administration, the palace was rebuilt in a Neoclassical style to a design by Georg von Veldten. A large paper factory was built nearby and the English gardener Thomas Gray laid out an English park with a mosaic of ponds full of fish. Paul apparently planned to rename Ropsha into the Bloody Field, in commemoration of the dramatic events of 1762, but was assassinated himself before this came to pass.

Although the ponds of Ropsha remained an imperial fishing ground under his sons, they rarely visited the place. It was more popular with noble anglers who even named a special breed of scaly carp after Ropsha. When Alexandre Dumas, père visited the estate in 1858, the palace belonged to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In the ensuing decades, it was seldom inhabited, though Grand Duchess Xenia, the last tsar's sister, chose to spend her wedding night there.

During the Russian Civil War Ropsha saw some heavy fighting, as General Yudenich wrested it from the Bolsheviks on two occasions. After the Perestroika, the palace fell into neglect and disrepair. Inscribed with other imperial estates into the World Heritage List, the edifice may still be viewed in its half-ruined state.

[edit] Online references

• (English) Ropsha Ruins Await Reconstruction and Renovation After Years of Neglect
• (Russian) Brief history of Ropsha

The last page on which the project of developpement of the palace is exposed:

http://www.hermitage.museum.ru/html_En/06/hm6_5_0_0_0.html

The official website of the project of reconstruction of the palace: http://www.ropsha.ru/en/index2_en.html