Winter palace netflix

Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli was the last great baroque architect to work in St. Petersburg, and he lived to see the sumptuously ornate style that he championed fall out of favour with the city's elite.

Nonetheless, as the creator of the Winter Palace and the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, his name is synonymous with the extraordinary, at times excessive, luxury enjoyed and displayed by Russia's Romanov rulers in the 18th century, perhaps the most immediately striking aspect of St. Petersburg's architecture for visitors.

Born in Paris, he was the son of Carlo Rastrelli, a sculptor who had come to St. Petersburg in 1716 to work for Peter the Great.

He began his professional education under his father (also a trained architect), and is presumed to have studied in Europe at some point in the 1720s. His first commission, i