The first round table of the Worldwide St. Petersburg Club this year took place in St. Petersburg. The event was organized with the participation of the Organizing Committee of the Golden Trezzini Awards and the State Museum of St. Isaac's Cathedral.
The event, which took place on February 21 in St. Isaac's Cathedral, was timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the death of Agustín de Betancourt — an outstanding Russian statesman and scientist of Spanish origin, lieutenant general, architect and engineer, who made a significant contribution to the development of the transportation system of the Russian Empire.
The choice of the venue for the meeting was not accidental: in 1816, Alexander I entrusted Betancourt, the chairman of the newly formed Committee for Construction and Hydraulic Works, with the preparation of a project for the reconstruction of St. Isaac's Cathedral. It was Betancourt who instructed the committee's draughtsman, Auguste de Montferrand, to develop options for the reconstruction of St. Isaac's Cathedral. Betancourt himself was in charge of the technical part of the construction, calculating the structures, developing projects of mechanisms and scaffolds for lifting the columns of the cathedral.
During the event, several esteemed speakers presented their reports: Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage Museum; Yuri Mudrov, Director of the State Museum of St. Isaac’s Cathedral; Dmitry Kuznetsov, a writer and Professor at Peter the Great Polytechnic University in St. Petersburg; Gennagiy Polunin, Acting Deputy Director for Exploitation of the State Museum of St. Isaac’s CathedralKsenia Ivanova, a representative from the Committee on State Control, Use, and Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the Government of St. Petersburg; Olga Filippova, Chief Keeper of the Parks at the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve; and Ivan Chechot, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg State University, Candidate of Art History, and Senior Researcher at the Russian Institute of Art History, among others.
In the speech of Pavel Chernyakov, the Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Golden Trezzini Awards, the idea was expressed that events similar to the Round Table in St. Isaac's Cathedral are an integral part of the mission of the Award, which bears the name of the first architect of St. Petersburg, Domenico Trezzini. Such events pay tribute to the architects and restorers of the past, while the Golden Trezzini statuettes are awarded to modern architects and restorers.
Photos by Vladislav Kuznetsov
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