Rundāle Palace (Latvian: Rundāles pils; German: Schloss Ruhental, formerly also Ruhenthal and Ruhendahl) is the most important baroque palace in Latvia, situated at Pilsrundāle, 12 km ( 7 miles ) west of Bauska. It was constructed in the 1730s to a design by Bartolomeo Rastrelli as a summer residence of Ernst Johann von Biron, the duke of Courland. Following Biron's fall from grace, the palace stood empty until the 1760s, when Rastrelli returned to complete its interior decoration.
After Courland was absorbed by the Russian Empire in 1795, Catherine the Great presented the palace to her lover, Prince Zubov, who spent his declining years there. His young widow, Thekla Walentinowicz, a local landowner's daughter, remarried Count Shuvalov, thus bringing the palace to the Shuvalov family, with whom it remained until the Russian Revolution of 1917.
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