59°56′28″N30°18′45″E / 59.941232°N 30.312629°E /59.941232; 30.312629

ThePalace Embankment orPalace Quay (Russian: Дворцовая набережная, Dvortsovaya naberezhnaya) is a street along theNeva River inCentral Saint Petersburg which contains the complex of theHermitage Museum buildings (including theWinter Palace), theHermitage Theatre, theNew Michael Palace, theSaltykov Mansion and theSummer Garden.^[1]

The embankment was wooden up to 1761, whenCatherine the Great ordered court architectYury Felten to build stone embankments. The street as seen nowadays was laid out between 1763 and 1767, when it used to be a preferred place of residence for theRussian Imperial Nobility. The street begins at thePalace Bridge, where theAdmiralty Embankment becomes the Palace Embankment, and the street ends at theFontanka, where it becomes theKutuzov Embankment.

The Palace Embankment is one of the main places of interest in the city as it offers a wonderful view of the Neva, thePeter and Paul Fortress andVasilievsky Island.^[2]

• Prachechny Bridge [ru]
• Summer Garden
• Upper Swan Bridge
• No. 2 —Mansion of Ivan Betskoy [ru]
• No. 4 — Saltykov Mansion
• No. 5/1 (Millionnaya st.) — theMarble Palace, built byAntonio Rinaldi forCatherine's favouriteGrigory Orlov. Since 1992 the palace is a part of theRussian Museum.^{[3][full citation needed]}
• No. 6 —Service corps of the Marble Palace [ru]
• No. 8 —Gromov's mansion [ru]
• No. 10 —Gagarina (Zherebtsova) mansion [ru]
• No. 18 —New Michael Palace
• No. 26 — former Grand DukeVladimir Aleksandrovich palace, 1860s, built by Alexander Rezanov. Nowadays it known as theHouse of Scientists.^{[4][full citation needed]}
• No. 30 —Sklyaev Mansion [ru]
• Hermitage Bridge
• No. 32 —Hermitage Theatre
• Great Hermitage [ru]
• Small Hermitage [ru]
• No. 38 — theWinter Palace
• Gardens of the Winter Palace

In his novelEugene Onegin,Alexander Pushkin depicted himself walking along Palace Quay with his hero, Eugene Onegin:

Filled with his heart's regrets, and leaning
Against the rampart's granite shelf,
Eugene stood lost in pensive dreaming
(As once some poet drew himself).
The night grew still... with silence falling;
Only the sound of sentries calling,
Or suddenly fromMillion Street
Some distant droshky's rumbling beat;
Or floating on a drowsy river,
A lonely boat would sail along,
While far away some rousing song
Or plaintive horn would make us shiver.
But sweeter still, amid such nights,
AreTasso's octaves' soaring flights.^[5]

For the first edition of this chapter, the poet commissioned an illustration depicting him and Onegin walking together along the quay. Upon receiving the illustration, which represented him leaning on a parapet with his back turned towards the Peter and Paul Fortress, he was exceedingly displeased with the result (which had little in common with his own preliminary sketch, illustrated to the right) and scribbled the followingepigram underneath (here in translation byVladimir Nabokov):

Here, after crossing Bridge Kokushkin,
With bottom on the granite propped,
Stands Aleksandr Sergeich Pushkin;
Near M'sieur Onegin he has stopped.
Ignoring with a look superior
Thefateful Power's citadel,
On it he turns a proud posterior:
My dear chap, poison not the well!^[6]

• Pushkin, Alexander (1995).Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 25.ISBN 0192838997.
• Nabokov, Vladimir (1964).Eugene Onegin: Commentary and index. Princeton University Press. p. 177.ISBN 0691019045.
• Cross, Anthony (2010).A Corner of a Foreign Field: The British Embassy in St Petersburg, 1863–1918. MHRA. p. 328.ISBN 9781907322037.