[4] He redesigned the external appearance of Peter and Paul Fortress and created an unprecedented Trinity Church combining a Roman rotunda with one-of-a-kind pyramidal bell tower.

He adapted rammed earth technology to the environment of Northern Russia and used it in his extant Priory Palace in Gatchina; Lvov's construction school, established in 1797, trained over 800 craftsmen.

[8] Until 1775, Lvov, along with his military service that became a mere formality, was also employed by the Collegium of Foreign Affairs as a diplomatic courier and extensively travelled to German principalities and Denmark.

[8] He led otherwise a modest lifestyle of a salaried clerk, living at his friends' houses, and could not afford renting his own until May 1779, when his pay was raised to 700 roubles per annum.

[10] In April 1781, Lvov was appointed secretary to the Russian Embassy in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony, but "her majesty's will" retained him at Saint Petersburg court.

[8] Instead of Dresden, he left for Warsaw and Vienna on government business and managed to carve out time for a personal tour of Italy (Livorno, Pisa, Florence, Bologna and Venice).

Contrary to neoclassical mainstream of his age,[12] Lvov as a poet belonged to emerging sentimentalism[12][13] and pioneered exploration of "spontaneous, great-hearted sincerity in the Russian peasant"[12] that defined yet unexplored national character.

He belonged to a close-knit ring of fellow poets; its key members, Lvov, Derzhavin and Vasily Kapnist, were bonded by their marriages to three Dyakova sisters.

[19] Politically, Lvov was an "active royalist"[20] faithful to Catherine and later Paul I, at the same time he was also loyal to his fraternity; he secured a diplomatic appointment to Khemnitzer,[21] and tried to prevent the 1790 trial of Alexander Radishchev.

[23] In the end, Lvov produced "perhaps the most articulate early image of the exuberant Russian soul, and the most explicitly contemptuous of the West"[24] predating nationalist writing by Nikolai Gogol.

"[26] The Coachmen was written in 1786 as a one-time event to mark Catherine's visit to Tambov (a new town managed by Lvov's buddy Derzhavin)[27] and contained the first instance of A Birch Stood in the Field (Russian: Во поле берёзка стояла) recorded and performed professionally.

[28] The book was co-authored by Ivan Prach (or Jan Prač)[34] who transcribed sheet music, and is thus known in the English world as Lvov-Prach collection, shortly LPC.

[6] A list of Lvov's architectural works compiled by Tatarinov contains 87 buildings and country estates,[39] some unconditionally attested through archive evidence, others attributed with different degrees of confidence.

[41] However, absolute majority of Lvov's works were built for private clients: Bezborodko, Derzhavin, Olenin (Utkina Dacha), Kochubey, the Vorontsov and Vyazemsky families in the 1780s.

[42] Catherine commissioned Lvov the church of Saint Joseph in Mogilev to commemorate the event,[42] the project earned him honorary membership at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1786).

[46] Another high-ranking client, prince Vyazemsky, director of state porcelain factories, commissioned a suburban estate (now within the limits of Saint Petersburg) including Lvov's most unusual[47] work, the Trinity Church in Aleksandrovskoe also known as Kulich and Paskha[47] (1785–1787).

In an ironic twist of fortune, in April 1797, Paul I dispatched Lvov to Moscow to redesign Bartolomeo Rastrelli's modest Grand Kremlin Palace,[53] a feat once attempted by Vasili Bazhenov.

Lvov produced a vast plan consisting of a three-part neoclassical palace core within a redesigned Gothic revival citadel,[53] "an intimate royal villa in a park-like setting.

[39] In 1785, Lvov acquired a helpful associate Adam Menelaws, one of 73 Scottish craftsmen recruited by Charles Cameron, and the future house architect of Nicholas I.

[60] Menelaws concurrently managed Lvov's construction projects in Torzhok and other places,[60][61] raising suspicion that coal survey was merely an excuse for appropriating the Scotsman.

Unaware of spontaneous combustion hazard, the shippers dumped incoming coal in one lump on the bank of the Neva River; the whole enterprise ended in a spectacular fire.

In August 1797, he obtained Paul's consent and state financing to set up a school training local workers in new technology, irrigation and road construction.

[64] In the end of 1797, Paul commissioned Lvov to design and build the Priory Palace in Gatchina Park—the largest rammed earth project ever built in Russia.

The meeting paid back in October 1802, when Alexander granted Lvov the rank of privy councilor and appointed him to the Expedition of State Household.