Art Hotel proudly bears the name of Trezzini - the first chief architect of St. Petersburg.
Domenico Trzzini – Italian, a native of Switzerland, who had been recruited by Peter the Great from the Dutch court in 1703 to oversee the construction of his new capital. Trezzini played an important role in shaping the Northern capital as a truly European city.

The name of Trezzini for our art hotel has been chosen for several reasons.

The hotel was designed not only to lodge travellers coming to visit our city, but also to acquaint them with the works of modern artists, architects, musicians and writers who come from all over Russia and also from abroad and become the guests and friends of the hotel.
Art is the language available for use by all nations. Art unites us and awakes the best feelings in each of us.

Domenico Trezzini was a foreigner, but it did not prevent him from accepting Russia as his second motherland and creating a new style of Russian architecture, later called “Petrine Baroque”.

Domenico Trezzini was born in1670, in a small town of Astana (in the south of Switzerland on the border with Italy). He studied architecture in Italy but later had to go to work in Denmark. From 1703 and until he died in 1734, Domenico Trezzini lived and worked in Russia. He became the first chief architect of Saint-Petersburg and for his service to the state was granted a title of nobility. In Russia he was called Andrey Ivanovich Trezzini. He was married three times and had five children. Trezzini died in St. Petersburg on February 19, 1734 and was buried in the cemetery of Sampsonievsky Cathedral.

Peter the Great liked Trezzini and he even became a godfather of his son Pietro. The tsar singled Trezzini’s works out among projects made by other architects and in 1706 he appointed Trezzini the Head of the Office of Buildings and Structures.

Domenico Trezzini designed and contributed to numerous buildings in SPb. Many of them survived from Peter’s pioneering days. Among the most notable are the building of Twelve Collegia (it had been designed to accommodate the 12 main ministries of the government, and later assigned to SPb State University), Peter’s Summer Palace on the Fontanka river, the Annunciation Cathedral (the oldest church in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (or: Monastery).

For over 30 years Trezzini had been in charge of all constructional projects in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The golden spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral – a true masterpiece designed by Trezzini - has become one of the main symbols of our city.

Domenico Trezzini took an active part in working out a general project for Vasilievsky Island.
Peter the Great originally envisaged the area as the administrative and cultural centre of the city. Building sites were assigned to the nobility and the merchants, while the interior of the island was to be reserved for residence for the wealthy. However the disadvantages of sitting a capital on an island in the middle of a powerful river soon became obvious, and by the middle of the 18th century the scheme was dropped. By this time, a number of parallel streets and the three avenues, that appeared at right angles to these streets, had already taken shape and the layout of the streets survived to this day.

Our hotel is located on a very nice stretch of one of those avenues - Bolshoi avenue (or: prospect). Opposite our hotel on the other side of the avenue, you can see Andreevsky Market, which was built as trading rows for the island’s merchants.