Catherine the Great ordered the Marble Palace to be
built as a present for her lover, Count Orlov, who
first had the nerve to lose it twice in card-games
(both times Catherine bought it back and presented it
to him anew) and then had the audacity to die before
it was finished. Both the interior and exterior are
fronted in thirty-two kinds of marble, hence the
name. Formerly home to the Leningrad branch of the
Central Lenin Museum, it is now used for various
temporary exhibitions and a new semi-permanent
exhibition of paintings entitled "Formal Portraits of
Russia."
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