[1] He worked for the Romanov family and was a member and professor by rank of the Imperial Academy of Arts.

Monighetti started his career as a fashionable architect by designing a cluster of villas in Tsarskoe Selo, notable those for Princess Yusupov and Prince Bagration.

In 1850, he was commissioned by Nicholas I of Russia to stylise a Turkish bath in the Catherine Park as a little mosque.

On the strength of his success in Tsarskoe Selo, Monighetti was asked by Alexander II to design his summer residence in Livadiya, Crimea.

He applied the newly fashionable style to the Polytechnical Museum in Moscow, the Russian church in Vevey, Switzerland, and the sepulchre for Alexander II's illegitimate children in Tsarskoe Selo.