Catherinethal ("Catherine's valley") is a Petrine Baroque palace of Catherine I of Russia in Tallinn, Estonia. It was built after the Great Northern War to Nicola Michetti's designs by Gaetano Chiaveri and Mikhail Zemtsov. In the 20th century the Estonian version of the name, Kadriorg, gained currency and came to be applied to the surrounding district. The palace currently houses an art gallery. The KUMU Museum is sited in the park[1][2].
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After the successful siege of Reval in 1710 Peter the Great of Russia bought a Dutch-style manor house at Lasnamäe for his wife Catherine. The house today is the result of a drastic renovation ordered by Nicholas I of Russia in 1827[1][2].
The new palace was started on 25 July 1718. Peter and Catherine visited the unfinished residence on several occasions, but after the emperor's death in 1725 Catherine showed no interest in the seaside property. The great hall with Catherine's initials and profuse stucco decor (attributed to Heinrich von Bergen) survives, but many other interiors have been altered.
The gardener Ilya Surmin was responsible for the flower garden with two fountains and the so-called mirage garden on several levels. The layout of the park shares similarities with that of Strelna.[3]
Catherinethal was abandoned by Russian royalty throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries. In the 1930s Konstantin Päts, Estonia's first president, embarked on extensive and controversial restorations with the aim of transforming the park and the palace into his private domain. A purpose-built presidential palace on the grounds (1938) was designed by Alar Kotli.
The palace became the main site for the Art Museum of Estonia in 1921. The museum was re-housed in temporary locations from 1929 while the palace was being converted into the Estonian president's residence. It returned to the palace in 1946. The palace was closed in 1991 having fallen into a state of disrepair. It was decided that a new building would be established nearby for the museum (KunstiMuuseum or 'KUMU' for short).
The restored palace was reopened in the summer of 2000, but it no longer served as the main building of the museum, only as a branch. It is the home of the foreign art collection of the museum[4].This art museum has paintings by;Bartolomeus Vander Helst,Gilles Van Valckenbosch("Burning of Troy"),Jacob Jordaens("Holy Family")Lambert de Hondt,Adam Cornelisz Beeldemaker("Hunter on Horseback"),Maria Wagner,Bernardo Strozzi,Pietro Liberi,Anton Graff,Angelica Kauffmann,Francesco Fontebasso,Mikhail Clodt,and Ilya Repin("Soldier's Tale")
| The façade | The interior | The palace in winter |
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