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Without any doubt, this is the most spectacular room of the palace. Thousands of lights glitter like stars, reflected in hundreds of mirrors and in the highly polished parquet floors. The sensation of being in the Throne Room is without comparison. In Imperial days, during a Gala Ball hosted by the Tsar, with hundreds of candles, magificent music and the opulence of the court, the experience of being in the room must have overwhelmed the senses. It was designed by the architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli between 1752 and 1756. All these elements of rich decor create the illusion of unlimited space. The arrangement of large windows and mirrors in the spaces of wall between them, as well as the multiple reflections in the mirrors extend the gallery's limits. The painting on the ceiling depicting a colonnade around the perimeter of the room, above which float figures on the backdrop of a blue sky, extends the space upwards.
The hall is painted in two colours, with an area of approximately 1,000 square meters, and occupies the entire width of the palace. The windows on the eastern side look out onto the park, and on the western side, onto the palace square. In the summer, the hall is penetrated by sunlight which plays on the gilding throughout the day, and in the evening 696 lamps are lit on 12 - 15 chandeliers located near the mirrors, which made the impression of the hall more effective.
The hall's sculptural and gilded carvings and the continuous ornamentation covering the walls were executed according to sketches by Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli and models by the sculptorand decorator Johann Franz Dunker by 130 Russian woodcarvers. The walls at the ends of the hall were especially extravagantly finished, and decorated with compositions containing many different figures.
The painted ceiling was executed in 1752 - 1754 according to a sketch overseen by Giuseppe Valeriani, the well-known Venetian decorator and perspectivist. He was assisted by Antonio Battista Perisinotti, Alexei and Yefim Belsky, Ivan and Pyotr Firsov, S. Ivanov, N. Afanasiev, B. Sukhodolsky, Gavril Kozlov, I. Vasiliev and M. Sergeev. The painting covered the entire ceiling and consisted of three independent compositions depicting the Allegory of Russia, the Allegory of Peace, and the Allegory of Victory. The enormous mural, along with the gilded carvings on the walls of the room, had an extremely strong effect on the eye. In the 1790s, the ceiling mural was removed due to a deformation in the eaves. In 1856 - 1858, the mural "Allegorical Depiction of Science, Art and Industry" was created by the artists F. Wunderlich and E. Francuoli and praised the technical achievements of the mid-19th century. This mural, which survived until World War II, was not as valuable in terms of artistic quality as the Valeriani mural.
During World War II, the central and eastern parts of the mural, the ornamental frame, and more than half of the gilded carvings were destroyed.The plan for restoring the Great Hall was developed by the architect Alexander Kedrinsky. The gilded wood carvings were restored according to surviving pieces by the sculptor L. M. Shvetskaya and a team of woodcarvers under the direction of A. K. Kachuev.
In 1953 - 1954, when the Mikhailov Palace in Saint Petersburg was being restored, the side parts of the ceiling mural from the Great Hall, the "Allegory of Peace" and the "Allegory of Victory" by Valeriani, previously considered lost, were found. Thanks to this discovery, a decision was made to restore the ceiling to its original state by returning the two surviving paintings to the Catherine Palace, and recreate the remaining decoration. Recreation of the central part of the mural composition was aided by the surviving sketches, drawings, and a description of the mural with an explanation of all of the allegories created by Giuseppe Valeriani, as well as an 1857 drawing by the architect Andrei Stakenschneider. Alexander Kedrinsky made a sketch of the mural in the Throne room. Artists and conservationists under the direction of A.Ya. Kazakov worked on restoring the decorative mural. This work had no precedent in terms of complexity and scale in the history of world restoration practice.
The inlaid floors of dark and light oak were recreated according to original drawings by Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli. The room's interior is completed by chairs in the baroque style with gilded carved wood and seats upholstered in white damask.
