Peter the Great commissioned the palace in 1710, and the Swiss-Italian architect Domenico Trezzini designed it. It was built from 1710 to 1714. The style is Petrine Baroque, with a modest form resembling Dutch burghers' houses. It is a two-story stone building with a four-slope iron roof, a copper statue of St. George, and dragon-shaped drainage corners. Each floor has seven rooms. Andreas Schlüter's friezes include 28 bas-reliefs, and Jean-Baptiste Le Blond built the water connections.
Peter and Catherine I lived there from 1714 until his death in 1725. Carlo Rossi converted it into a Coffee House in 1826. A German bombing raid badly damaged it in the Second World War, and A. E. Gessen supervised a restoration in the early 1960s.
It opened as a museum in 1934. It belongs to the State Russian Museum and opens from June to October.
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