When she became Empress, Catherine the Great pronounced neoclassicism to be the official court style and when Gregory Ptemkin (Potyomkin-Tavrichesky) was named Prince of Tauride, she commissioned a palace for him to be built in accordance with her design directive. Completed in 1789, the Tauride Palace was starkly neoclassical with symmetrical rows of columns.
The Palace was reconstructed in the early twentieth century and now serves as headquarters for the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States.