Scientific archive

The inventories carried out between 1917 and 1925 are especially valuable, as it was a time when the cultural property owned by the tsar’s family were expropriated and became recorded as museum’s holdings. Topographical sketches, along with drawings that showed the arrangement of objects, were done at the same time, which now serve as a crucial resource in the restoration of original interiors. Equally important for the museum’s research are multivolume detailed inventory books that were compiled in draft or final copies between 1938 and 1939. Beginning in 1923, the museum researchers at the Gatchina Palace (V.K.Makarov, I.K.Yanchenko, G.V.Smirnov, A.V.Pomarnatsky, etc.) published results of their studies in the field of art history in the series “The Old Gatchina”, which came out later as a scholarly bulletin. Their work was continued in the post-war period, when the palace still lay in ruins.