The Winter Palace is a palace in Saint Petersburg, which served as the official residence of the Russian Emperors from 1732 to 1917. As of 2021 the palace and its precincts form the Hermitage Museum. Situated between Palace Embankment and Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and altered almost continuously between the late 1730s and 1837, when it was severely damaged by fire and immediately rebuilt. The storming of the palace in 1917, as depicted in Soviet propaganda art and in Sergei Eisenstein's 1927 film October, became an iconic symbol of the Russian Revolution.
The emperors constructed their palace on a monumental scale that aimed to reflect the might and power of Imperial Russia. From the palace, the Tsars ruled over 22,800,000 square kilometers and 125 million subjects by the end of the 19th century. Several architects participated in designing the Winter Palace - most notably the Italian Bartolomeo Rastrelli - in what became known as the Elizabethan Baroque style.