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Soon after he became emperor, Pavel I
commissioned the Italian architect V. F. Breno to build him a new palace where
Elisabeth's summer palace had once stood. The new edifice, where Paul I moved
in to live, was built in 1797-1800. The palace is a massive square building in
the Renaissance style with a large inside court. It owes its name -
Mikhailovskii Castle - to the palace church dedicated to Archangel Mikhail and
to the fact that it looks much like a castle. Despite the moat that surrounds
it, its bastions, parapets and cannons, Paul was murdered there in 1801, after
a short stay, by palace conspirators headed by Count Peter Pahlen, the military
Governor of Saint Petersburg. Since 1822 the castle has served to house the
Academy of Engineers. It is now shown on St. Petersburg maps and guide books as
the Engineer Castle - see our section on St. Petersburg for photo.
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