Winter Palace (ETW building)
| Winter Palace | |
|---|---|
| Category: | Government |
| Level: | 6 |
| Turns to build: | 8 |
| Building cost: | 10000 |
| |
Peter the Great’s splendid building was intended to rival any royal palace anywhere in Europe or beyond.
It did so magnificently. The location in St. Petersburg was part of Peter’s policy of opening up to western ideas, where they were suitable for Russia, and his adoption of western architecture, culture and technology. The Tsar wanted his Palace to be the centrepiece of a “Third Rome” on the River Neva, and a new Imperial seat of government for all the Russias. It was deliberately built to be a palace rather than a fortress like the Kremlin in Moscow, although the wide prospects and avenues of St. Petersburg certainly made it entirely defensible by musket-armed troops.
The Palace remained as the official home of the Tsars for the next two centuries. It continued to play an important part in Imperial affairs until the end of Tsarist Russia and beyond. The 1905 “Bloody Sunday” massacre of unarmed protestors publicly demonstrated that the Tsar, for all the propaganda about being the “Little Father” of his people, had scant regard for the needs of ordinary folk. The storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 is an iconic moment in Russian history, the defining moment in the establishment of the Soviet state.
Unique building to: 
This building can only be built in the faction capital.