the Italian architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli. He had moved to St Petersburg in his youth with his father, the sculptor Carlo Rastrelli, in 1715, but their career stalled under a rivalry between Carlo Rastrelli and the architect Le Blonde. In 1730 they moved to Moscow, where the capital had been temporarily relocated, and either Francesco or his father were appointed court architect (it is unclear which Rastrelli it was) and were commissioned to design two wooden palaces (neither remain). They were the Winter Annenhof and the Summer Annenhof. Both served as precursors to his later work in St Petersburg once the capital was moved back. He would then go on to work on the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, becoming the most imposing residence in the city once it was finished in 1735. It would host two twin facades, one facing the Neva River and another facing the square, imposing and whose symmetry would only be broken twice by projecting bays. In plan the palace would be an elongated rectangle, enclosing a central court. After Empress Anna’s death in 1740 and Empress Elizabeth's ascension, there would be a brief lull in new commissions for Rastrelli, but as he remained the only architect capable of large-scale royal commissions his rank as Chief Architect was reinstated a few years later. He would continue to transition in style from a late Baroque to a Rococo style, apparent in his design of the Summer Palace in the Summer Garden, and signaled a further break from the more modest Petrine baroque. Rococo decorative elements would be present in his future designs such as in Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo, and some historians have argued the connection between the polychromatism of his designs (which hosted more colour than his European counterparts) with the polychromatism present in much of the Russian architectural tradition that had preceded the importation of the baroque style. Several of Rastrelli’s projects were re-designed under Catherine the Great, but many rooms still retain the original designs. Neoclassicism The Neoclassical in Russia not only draws influence from the Neoclassical style prevalent in France and England, but also drew from as much as it rejected the Baroque that had become prevalent in Russia over the 17th and early 18th century. The Russian neoclassical style drew its inspiration from the works of Palladio, Vignola, Vitruvius, and other writers on the classical orders, something that had started during