Ice palace
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An ice palace or ice castle is a castle-like structure made of blocks of ice. These blocks are usually harvested from nearby lakes when they become frozen in winter. The first known ice palace appeared in St. Petersburg, Russia and was the handiwork of Russian empress Anna Ivanovna. How much of the story is true is unclear.
[edit] Anna Ivanovna's palace
According to legend, prince Mikhail Golitsyn had married an Italian woman. Tsaritsa Anna Ivanovna saw this as an affront because she was a Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox. The wife died soon after but the tsaritsa did not forgive Golitsyn and decided to punish him in an unusual manner. She first ordered him to become a jester.
In the cold winter of 1739–1740, Anna Ivanovna gave an order to build a palace made of ice in St. Petersburg. She ordered the architect Pyotr Eropkin to design the building.
The palace was 24 meters tall and 7 meters wide. Huge ice blocks were "glued" together with water. The garden was filled with ice trees with ice birds and an ice statue of an elephant. The outer walls were lined with ice sculptures. Before the palace there were artillery pieces also made of ice. The palace was also furnished with furniture made of ice, including an ice bed with ice mattress and pillows. The whole structure was surrounded with a tall wooden fence.
The Empress selected prince Golitsyn a new wife, an unattractive kalmyk court lady Avdotya Ivanovna Buzheninova. She forced the prince to marry her and displayed the newlyweds in a procession where they rode an elephant and were followed by a number of cripples and members of despised ethnic minorities. In the palace the newlyweds were closed into an icy nuptial chamber under heavy guard. The couple barely survived the night.
Tsarina Anna Ivanovna died the following year and the castle did not survive the next summer.
As far as the legend is concerned, Golitsyn and his new wife decided to live together. She even gave birth to twins.
[edit] Other ice palaces
Many ice palaces have been built since. In North America, one was built in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1883.
The capital city of Minnesota, St. Paul, has played host to several ice palaces since 1886 as part the city's Winter Carnival. Some palaces have featured ice blocks numbering in the tens of thousands. A 1992 structure had 25,000 and stretched to a height of 150 feet (45.7 meters). One built in 1941 had 30,000 ice blocks. St. Paul last built an ice palace in January 2004.
Every year since 1954 the Quebec City Winter Carnival in Quebec City has featured ice palaces or ice castles of various sizes, depending on the budget, and has often used them to imprison briefly those persons who were judged to be too glum in this time of good cheer.
The All-American City Saranac Lake, New York has an annual winter carnival in which an ice palace is built. This tradition dates back from the 19th century from the long winters in which tuburculosis patients who came to the town for recouperation would become bored and depressed. To lift spirits an ice palace was built and an annual winter carnival started.
Saparmurat Niyazov, the recently deceased dictator of Turkmenistan, ordered the construction of a huge ice palace near the capital city of Aşgabat in April 2004, despite Turkmenistan's climate and more pressing social needs.
A replica of the original Ice Palace is yearly rebuilt and open for public in Saint-Petersburg, Russia since 2005.
