The Winter Palace, begun in 1755 by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, and completed in 1817 by Giacomo Quarenghi and C. J. Rossi, was the most imposing royal house in Europe, dwarfing and outshining Versailles: fifteen miles of corridors, 2,500 rooms, countless columns of marble, a thousand famous paintings; on the lowest floors, two thousand servants, and, in one wing, hens, ducks, goats, and pigs,
