Taking the Alhambra to St. Petersburg

Little is known of Russian architects’ in-depth engagement with Ibero-Islamic architecture, especially the medieval Nasrid palaces of the Alhambra in Granada, in the so-called Moorish Revival. This study, rich in material, analyzes 19th-century Orientalizing buildings and interiors in St. Petersburg and traces the routes by which the formal vocabulary of the Alhambra reached Russia from Spain. Incorporating essential aspects of Russian cultural history and 19th-century European notions of the Orient, it shows that Russian architects and the Imperial Academy of Arts were among the pioneers of the Moorish Revival.

• The first examination of St. Petersburg’s Orientalizing architecture in a pan-European context

• Russian architects as pioneers of the Moorish Revival