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An ice palace or ice castle is a castle-like structure made of blocks of ice. These blocks are usually harvested from nearby rivers or lakes when they become frozen in winter. The first known ice palace (or, rather, ice house, ледяной дом in Russian) appeared in St. Petersburg, Russia and was the handiwork of Empress Anna. ==Anna Ivanovna's palace== In the cold winter of 1739–1740, Anna Ivanovna gave an order to build a palace made of ice in St. Petersburg. The palace and the surrounding festivities were part of the celebration of Russia's victory over the Ottoman Empire. She ordered the architect Pyotr Yeropkin to design the building.〔("The Construction of the Ice Palace" ) 〕 It was built under the supervision of Georg Kraft, who left a detailed description of the palace.〔(Леденящие подробности < Технологии < Популярная механика )〕 The palace was 20 meters tall and 50 meters wide. Huge ice blocks were "glued" together with water. The garden was filled with ice trees with ice birds and an ice statue of an elephant. The outer walls were lined with ice sculptures. Before the palace there were artillery pieces also made of ice. The palace was also furnished with furniture made of ice, including an ice bed with ice mattress and pillows. The whole structure was surrounded with a tall wooden fence. The festivities involving the Ice Palace included a mock wedding of two jesters.〔The tradition of mock weddings has been known in Russia since Peter the Great. In fact, even the wedding festivities of Anna herself included a mock wedding of Peter's jester.〕 Prince Mikhail Alekseyevich Galitzine had married an Italian woman. Empress Anna saw this as an affront because she was a Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox. The wife died soon after but Anna did not forgive Galitzine and decided to punish him in an unusual manner. She first ordered him to become a jester. The Empress selected prince Galitzine a new wife, an unattractive Kalmyk maidservant Avdotya Ivanovna Buzheninova. She forced the prince to marry her and displayed the newlyweds in a procession where they rode an elephant, dressed as clowns, and were followed by a number of circus freaks and farm animals. In the palace the newlyweds were closed naked into an icy nuptial chamber under heavy guard. The couple survived the night because the bride traded a pearl necklace with one of the guards for a sheepskin coat. Empress Anna died the following year and the castle did not survive the next summer. The Russian reading public was made aware of Anna's mock palace in 1835, when Ivan Lazhechnikov (1792–1869) described her escapade in ''The Ice House'', one of the first historical novels in the language. The novel was made into a film as early as 1927. ''The Mirrored World'' (2012), a novel by the author of ''The Madonnas of Leningrad'', also depicts this episode in history. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「ice palace」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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