The yard of the Imperial Lyceum.
The
Imperial Lyceum in
Tsarskoe Selo near
Saint Petersburg was founded by the Emperor
Alexander I with the object of educating youths of the best families, who should afterwards occupy important posts in the Imperial service.
Its regulations were published on 11 January 1811, although they had received the Imperial sanction on 12 August 1810, when the four-storied "new" wing of the Great Palace was appointed for its accommodation, with special premises for a hospital, a kitchen and other domestic requirements, as well as a residence for the administrative staff. Furniture and utensils were given with the
neoclassical building designed by
Vasily Stasov and situated next to the
Catherine Palace.
The Tsarskoe Selo Lyceum was opened on October 19, 1811. The first graduates were all brilliant and included
Alexander Pushkin and
Alexander Gorchakov. The opening date was celebrated each year with carousals and revels, and Pushkin composed new verses for each of those occasions. In January
1844 the Lyceum was moved to
St Petersburg.
During the 33 years of the Tsarskoe Selo Lyceum's existence, there were 286 graduates. The most famous of these, in addition to the above two, were
Anton Delvig,
Wilhelm Kuchelbecker,
Nicholas de Giers,
Dmitriy Tolstoy,
Jacob Grot,
Nikolay Danilevsky,
Aleksey Lobanov-Rostovsky,
Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, and
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin.
See also
