The palace was built as a gift from Empress Catherine the Great for Count Grigory Orlov, her favourite and the most powerful Russian nobleman of the 1760s. Construction started in 1768 to designs by Antonio Rinaldi,[1] who previously had helped decorate the grand palace at Caserta near Naples, and lasted for 17 years.[2]
The palace takes its name from its opulent decoration in a wide variety of polychrome marbles.[2] A rough-grained Finnishgranite on the ground floor is in subtle contrast to polished pink Karelian marble of the pilasters and white Urals marble of capitals and festoons. Panels of veined bluish gray Urals marble separate the floors, while Tallinndolomite was employed for ornamental urns. In all, 32 disparate shades of marble were used to decorate the palace.[1]
During the Soviet era, the palace successively housed the Ministry of Labour (1917–19), the Academy of Material Culture (1919–36), and, most notably, the main local branch of the Moscow-based Central (i.e. National) Lenin Museum (1937–91) with sub-branches across Leningrad in Lenin's memorial apartments all over the city - the places where he lived or stayed during his various periods in what was then Saint Petersburg.
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