Yury Felten

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Cast-iron grille of the Summer Garden in St Petersburg

Yury Matveyevich Felten (Russian: Ю́рий Матве́евич Фе́льтен, German name Georg Friedrich Veldten) (1730 — 1801) was a court architect to Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.

Yuri Felten was born Georg Veldten, into a family of German immigrants in Russia. His father worked for the Russian Academy of Sciences. Young Yuri Felten studied on a Russian State scholarship at the Gymnasium of the Academy of Sciences.

In 1744, after the death of his father, Felten moved to Germany. From 1744 to 1749 he studied at Tubingen University, but his financial and personal situation prompted him to move back to St. Petersburg. Felten wrote a letter to Empress Catherine the Great, and she extended her hospitality and scholarship, so he completed studies at the Russian Academy, graduating in 1752 as an architect.

From 1752 to 1762 Felten worked as assistant for architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli during the construction of the Winter Palace and other buildings in St. Petersburg. During the 1760s and 1770s he designed the complex ensemble of the Palace Square, now partially incorporated into the current buildings of the General Staff. At the same time, he designed the wing of the Hermitage building on the waterfront, and worked on the winter garden on the roof of the Old Hermitage, as well as extended the museum galleries.

Chesme Church

Yuri Felten enjoyed trust and respect from the Empress Catherine the Great. She commissioned him many works at the Catherine Palace and park, such as the Zubov wing of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, as well as at the Winter Palace and other royal commissions. He also designed two Lutheran churches in central St. Peteraburg, the Chesma Palace (destroyed in the Siege of Leningrad) and the Church of Saint John at Chesme Palace.

Felten was also a reputable inventor and engineer. He built a heavy-lifting machine that moved the enormous granite rock that was the pedestal of the Bronze Horseman.^{[citation needed]} To this day the pedestal is the largest stone ever moved by man.

From 1764 Felten taught architecture at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1789, he was appointed the Director of the Imperial Academy of Arts, a position he kept for the rest of his life.

It may be argued that his best-known work is not a building but an iron-cast grille of the Summer Garden (1783).