Elsewhere in the world, Russia was mocked for crude, exuberant expressions of Western architecture. When she became Empress, Catherine the Great wanted to introduce more dignified styles. She had studied engravings of classical architecture and new European buildings, and she made neoclassicism the official court style.
When Gregory Ptemkin (Potyomkin-Tavrichesky) was named Prince of Tauride, Catherine the Great hired the noted Russian architect I. E. Starov to design a palace using themes from ancient Greece and Rome. Called Tauride Palace or Taurida Palace, the palace was starkly neoclassical with symmetrical rows of columns.
Tauride Palace or Taurida Palace was completed in 1789, and was reconstructed in the beginning of the twentieth century. Now called Tavrichesky Palace, the building serves as headquarters for the InterParliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States.