The season of the White Nights in St. Petersburg is approaching fast, and it is time for us to take a trip to that remarkable city. The country's best trains provide an overnight link between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Our monument is the most famous building in St. Petersburg, the Winter Palace, with over a thousand rooms. It is located in the heart of the city, with Palace Square on one side and the Neva River on the other. It's called ‘Winter Palace’ because it served as the Czar's winter residence. Its world fame comes from it accommodating the Hermitage, one of the world's leading art museums.

The current building of the Winter Palace was built in 1754-1762 by Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli. It was the fifth to be built on the site, the first palace having been erected by Peter the Great in 1711. The style of the Winter Palace is Baroque, and to many Americans it seems excessively ornate. It is a musical building however, the rhythm being determined by the uneven distribu­tion of the columns. The facades are lavishly decorated with ornamentation and sculptures. The interiors were repeatedly remodeled.

The Winter Palace was the residence of the Czars, on and off, from the 1760s to 1917. It also held the Hermitage, a museum founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, when she bought a collection of paintings in Berlin. The Hermitage was rooted in the Age of the Enlightenment, when Catherine the Great corresponded with people like Voltaire and surrounded herself with progressive advis­ers. Today, the treasures of the Winter Palace have been expanded to 50 halls of French art dating back to the 18th-19th centuries, 37 halls of Italian art, numerous halls of the Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, German and other European schools, featuring such names as Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, and Veronese. The Hermitage leaves the excellent Pushkin Fine Arts Museum far behind in terms of the sheer amount and quality of the art on display. The Winter Palace was also used for occasions of state and held the official regalia of the Empire. In 1826, the War Gallery of 1812 was opened in the palace, featuring portraits of the Russian generals who fought in the campaign. In 1837, a terrible fire swept through the Winter Palace, but by 1849 restoration was completed.

The Winter Palace suffered a different kind of disaster in 1880. Stepan Khalturin, a member of the People's Will secret society, got a job as a carpenter in the Winter Palace and managed to smuggle dynamite into the basement. He lit the fuse before an official dinner was scheduled to begin with Alexander II. Dinner was delayed, and the Czar escaped unhurt, but the palace was damaged. Alexander II would die at the hands of the terrorists a year later, blown to bits by bombs.

After the death of Alexander II, Alexander III transferred his residence to Gatchina. With the ascent to power of the last Czar Nicholas II, the royal family returned to the Winter Palace. When World War I started, the palace housed a hospital. In March 1917, revolutionary troops occupied the palace and removed the two-headed eagles. In July, the Provisional Government moved in. Premier Kerensky lived in the Czar's quarters here. When the Bolsheviks pulled off their coup, the Winter Palace was taken by storm. Although there was little bloodshed in that initial coup, the palace suffered significantly. The Soviets set up many different facilities here, including a movie theater and a revolution museum. Although the Winter Palace was officially called the Palace of the Arts, the name never caught on, and the newly opened Hermitage Museum kept the old name.

During the siege of Leningrad, as St Petersburg was known in Soviet times, the palace was severely damaged by artillery shells and aircraft bombs. Extensive restoration work was carried out in the postwar period. The palace is maintained in relatively good condition, and ft was the focus of the recent Pushkin celebrations in St. Petersburg.

■ There is precious little we know about the architect who designed the Winter Palace and many other outstanding monuments in St. Patersburg and its suburbs. Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700-1771) came to Russia with his father, who was a sculptor invited to Russia by Peter the Great, in 1716. Bartolomeo Rastrelli Jr. apparently went back to Italy to study between 1725 and 1730. In 1730 -1763, he was court architect in Russia and an honorary member of the Academy of the Arts. Rastrelli was the country's leading Baroque architect. He interpreted the traditions of European Baroque under the influence of the Russian artistic tradition. His monuments display tremendous scope and use Russian architectural elements such as belfries and domes. His most outstanding masterpieces are, apart from the Winter Palace, the Great Palace in Peterhof, the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, and, in the city, the Vorontsov Palace, the Stroganov Palace and the Stegelmann House. The square in front of the Smolny convent, where he built the cathedral, was named after him Rastrelli Square. He apparently died in St. Petersburg.

By Sergei Sossinsky