Arabian Hall of the Winter Palace

The double doors[1] were designed to be on a straight axis through the principal state rooms and ultimately the Jordan Staircase, forming an enfilade.

[2] The privacy of the room was not compromised by the small private courtyard (see plan) from which windows, which once led to the Tsaritsa's winter-garden below, admitted light.

Designed by Alexander Briullov following the Winter Palace fire of 1837, the room is decorated in the neoclassical style fashionable in the early 19th century, known as Pompeian.

A ceiling, with a low segmental barrel vault with bands of shallow coffering stuccoed with classical motifs, is seemingly supported by a colonnade of engaged fluted Greek Doric columns with enriched echinus molding and no bases.

They were four "massive Negroes" fantastically dressed in scarlet trousers, gold jackets, white turbans and curved shoes.