“Скиты” веселой Елизавет: Русские эрмитажи середины XVIII века

The article is devoted to the history of the appearance of garden pavilions and Russian palace chambers also known as "hermitages." The tradition of building hermitages as special-purpose premises, adopted in Russia in the early eighteenth century, had acquired during the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna a meaningful national character and scope. Hereby, this tradition may be considered as one of the major cultural phenomena of that time. At the same time, Russian hermitages were significantly different in their function from the British and continental European hermitages. Their main function throughout the eighteenth century remained that of a private, isolated dining room equipped with a special table volante mechanism that allowed those who had gathered to eat without servants. The article therefore also pays attention to the role of mechanical tables and mechanical amusement machines in the baroque court culture. It also compares the design of Elizabeth Petrovna's dining hermitage in Tsarskoye Selo with European architectural treatises. The reader is also acquainted with the reasons for the development of such functional and iconographic features of Russian hermitage architecture, which occupies a special place in the vast and varied European tradition of hermitage construction.