Paul I of Russia
Paul I (; "Pavel Petrovich") ( – ) reigned as Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. Officially, he was the only son of Peter III and Catherine the Great, though Catherine hinted that he was fathered by her lover Sergei Saltykov, who also had Romanov blood, being a descendant of the first Romanov tsar's sister, Tatiana Feodorovna Romanova.
Battle of the Palaces
During the decade that separated Paul's death in 1801 and the French invasion of Russia in 1812, the Saint Petersburg court and its architects refined and modified Catherinian neoclassicism into the Russian version of Empire style. Alexander I has not actively engaged with architecture until post-war reconstruction, although he clearly preferred the art of Quarenghi, Thomas de Thomon and Andrey Voronikhin; construction of Voronikhin's Kazan Cathedral was launched just weeks after Paul's death. Outside Saint Petersburg, various Romantic styles based on Neo-Gothic architecture coexisted with prevailing official art. The aging architects involved in the "battle of the palaces" retired, making way to a new generation: