Senate Building

The Senate Building was designed by the architect MatveiKazakov in 1776-87. The central room is a round, white hall calledthe St.Catherine Hall, in which the CentralCommittee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union met. Following thedeath of Yakov Sverdlov (1919), the first President of Soviet Russia, thehall was named the Sverdlov Hall in his honour. Around this circular hall,25 metres (80 ft) in diameter and 27 metres (90 ft) high, are closely setCorinthian columns, between which are allegorical reliefs depicting virtues:Justice, Philanthropy, Lawabidingness, etc. (these are copies; the originalsare in the Armoury). Higher up are reliefsof Russian grand princes and tsars, the originals of which are also inthe Armoury. In 1918 the Soviet government occupied the building. One ofthe rooms became Lenin's Study, in which he also received visitors. Today,Lenin's Study is a museum, in which every item has been left intact, inthe same place as during Lenin's lifetime.