Tauride Palace

This long, low Neoclassical palace was built in the late eighteenth century for Prince Grigory Potemkin and named for his conquest of the Crimea, then known as Tauris. Its restrained columned facade conceals a vast domed hall and a winter garden that were among the grandest interiors of their day. In the early twentieth century the building housed the State Duma, Russia's first elected parliament, giving it a central role in the country's constitutional history.