The land on which it was built had originally been the site of the St. Petersburg residence of Zakhar Chernyshev, a prominent military commander who had played a key role in the Seven Years' War and been Minister of War in the reign of Catherine the Great.In 1839, Emperor Nicholas I commissioned the court architect Andrey Stackensneider to build a palace as a wedding present for his daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, who was about to marry Duke Maximilian of Leuchtenberg, the step-grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte and a keen amateur scientist and art collector.The original palace interiors were eclectic, with each hall decorated in a different style.The palace has been used as a government building since 1901- as home to the Council of the Russian Republic under the Provisional Government of 1917, to the Leningrad Soviet after the Second World War, and since 1994 to St. Petersburg's Legislative Assembly.