[2] During the first years of the 19th century, Rumyantsev was very influential with Alexander I and his mother Maria Fyodorovna, serving as Minister of Commerce (1802–1811) and President of the State Council (1810–1812).

Nicholas Rumyantsev died on 3 January 1826 in his neo-Palladian palace on English Quay in St Petersburg.

During the years of his foreign service, Nikolay Petrovich amassed a huge collection of historical documents, rare coins, maps, manuscripts, and incunabula which formed a nucleus of the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow (subsequently transformed into the State Russian Library).

He presided over a circle of young antiquaries (such as Pavel Stroev and Ivan Snegirev) that later drifted into the Slavophile camp.

[3] As a result, his name came to be attached to such exotic things as: In 1811 he commissioned sculptor Canova to create a statue of peace in recognition of the peacemaking efforts of his family.