Benois Villas
St Petersburg University Representative Office in Spain invites you to the online lecture "Benois Villas", dedicated to the 35th anniversary of the Benois Family Art Museum in Peterhof. Author and presenter — Evgenia Petrashen, Member of the Board of the St Petersburg Union of Architects, Senior Lecturer at the Design Department of St Petersburg University and Chief Architect and co-founder of the Benois Successors Architectural Bureau.
In 2023, the Peterhof Museum-Reserve celebrates the 35th anniversary of the opening of the Benois Family Museum and the 210th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Leontyevich Benois, architect, professor at the Imperial Academy of Arts, and chief architect of the Peterhof Palace Department. The Benois family is of French origin. In Russia, this family produced a whole constellation of talented architects, painters, sculptors, composers and artists.
At the end of the 19th century, representatives of St Petersburg’s artistic and business intelligentsia began buying up plots of land on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland to build summerhouses. This is how the famous villas of the Benois family came into being, which were part of the village of Bobylskaya until 1917. After the revolution and nationalisation, these astonishingly beautiful houses became a sanatorium for educators. The wooden summerhouses survived the war, were restored and continue to house unique works of art of various styles and types.
At this meeting we will discuss the history of the Benois dynasty, which made a significant contribution to Russian and world culture, and the role of the museum in the process of preserving and popularising this unique cultural heritage.
The lecture will be held as part of the events to mark the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg University, the oldest university in Russia. The meeting will be held online in Russian with simultaneous interpreting into Spanish.