The Anteroom

Maria Feodorovna's apartments can be accessed through a small Anteroom. It is an irregularly shaped room with a low ceiling because the servants' mezzanine was constructed above. From this small Anteroom, you can go to the rooms on the ground floor of the Central Building of the Palace, decorated during the life of Paul I.

An arched opening separates the entrance part of the Anteroom from the actual Anteroom of the apartments of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. This Anteroom has a high ceiling and is well lit by a large window overlooking the Private Garden. The paintings by Western European artists of the 18th–19th centuries hang on the walls. Along the walls, there are excellent examples of mahogany furniture with bronze ornaments from the Saint Petersburg workshop of Heinrich Gambs. A student of the famous German furniture maker David Roentgen, Gambs achieved great fame in Saint Petersburg, having received the position of a court mechanic. Having started working in Pavlovsk together with the architect Andrey Voronikhin, he completed almost all the furnishing of the new apartments of the Empress. On the shelf of the marble fireplace, there are paired vases made of Kalkan jasper with gilded bronze handles, made at the Peterhof Lapidary Factory ca. 1800 and presented to Maria Feodorovna as a gift. Near the window, is a unique work of Russian decorative art of the early 19th century: a bowl vase Egyptian Woman (bronze, pink granite, per the drawing of Andrey Voronikhin).

In the time of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, it was here, in the Anteroom, that employees and petitioners waited for the reception. While waiting, they could enjoy the works of art. The steward came first to report the current affairs to the mistress of Pavlovsk and receive new orders. The reception began with the appearance of the valet, who accompanied the visitor to the Empress's study.