View of the Tauride Palace (Tavrichesky Dvorets) and part of the gardens, St Petersburg, Russia. It was commissioned by Prince Grigory Potemkin of Tauride, and built in Palladian style between 1783 and 1789. It later became Catherine II's summer town house, and after that a barracks for a cavalry regiment. In 1906 it was transformed into the seat of the first Russian parliament, the Imperial State Duma. After the 1917 Revolution it housed the Provisional Government and the Petersburg Soviet. Since the 1990s, it has been home to the Interparliamentary Assembly of Member Nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States (IPA CIS).