Rundale Palace is a large Baroque palace located in Pilsrundale, near Bauska, in the historical region of Semgallia in Latvia. It was the summer residence of the Dukes of Courland.
The Rundale Palace was built in the years from 1736 to 1740 to a design by the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli as the summer residence of the Duke of Courland, Ernst Johann Biron (Bühren). The Rococo interior decorations, added later (1763-1768), are the work of Rastrelli himself, who is known to have designed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
Following the incorporation of Courland into the Russian Empire (1795) Catherine the Great gave the palace to her lover, Prince Platon Zubov, who settled there with her younger brother Valerian. On the death of the latter, the widow married Count Shuvalov, whose family retained possession of the palace until the Russian Revolution of 1917.
During Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1812 the palace was used as a hospital for the French army and many of the soldiers who died there were buried in the palace park, where today a monument erected in the nineteenth century remembers them.
During the First World War the palace was damaged, while following the Latvian land reform it became state property. In the 1920s the building was converted into a school with housing, until in 1933 it passed into the hands of the Latvian Historical Museum and could finally be restored between 1965 and 1977, although the works also continued internally until 1992.
Rundale Palace can be reached from Bauska by bus and is one of the major tourist destinations in Latvia. It is also used as a representative palace on the occasion of official visits, but it can be visited throughout the year together with its vast park.
Rundale Palace
Address: Rundale Parish, 3921 Pilsrundale Semgallia Lettonia
Phone: +371 26 499 151
Site:
https://rundale.net/Location inserted by
giulia