Driven up the wall

The one thing about being a journalist which never ceases to amaze me is you never know what you'll end up doing next. And you certainly can't know what to expect!

Which is why, when I was invited by the Russian Museum to take a look at how its restoration project was going, I shouldn't have gone with a head full of preconceived ideas.

"Great," I thought. "This will be a doddle. I'll go into the museum, be taken into a few workshops and see restorers hard at work, applying gold leaf to ornate pilasters. I'll be back at the office within the hour."

Wrong! If I had known what I was in for, I guarantee I would have chickened out then and there. I'm not one for heights and was in for a shock.

I was met by the chief foreman and project manager of the Finnish restoration firm Paanurakenne, Mr Carl-Christian Borup, who was to show me around the site.

The vast, government-funded, multi-million dollar project to restore the four facades was started in October 1993 when the Tampere-based company, which had hitherto specialized in restoring Finnish churches and large town houses, won the contract, beating several Russian firms.

Mr Borup said, "It was very exciting for us because we had never been faced with such a vast project as the Russian Museum. As it is we have few buildings in Finland that are this size, and we certainly don't go in for the stucco plastering that's so common in much of this city's architecture."

The project is certainly vast. It entails removing the plaster from 400 sq meters (480 sq yards) of facade, removing all 400 columns and replacing them with new ones. All the friezes along the top of the building needed restoring and all the intricate plaster cornices, moldings and capitals to the Corinthian pillars also needed replacing.

In addition, the glass on the roof of the museum needed replacing with specially tinted panes which keep out the ultra-violet light harmful to paintings. In most places the entire roof was completely replaced and a modern, hi-tech air-conditioning and filter system was installed.

Dotted around the restoration site, at the rear of the museum, are a number of tents with an army of plasterers hard at work carving intricate foliage designs into damp plaster using special scalpels.

These restoration specialists form only part of the 58 plaster workers and 160 mostly Russian employees who are presently working on the site at fever pitch to finish the project by its September deadline.

Mr Borup said, "This museum has not be properly restored since it was built (1819-25). During the Soviet period, the government went in for patching and superficial restoration. What we did was find the best example of a cornice pilaster or column and take a rubber mold from it.

"Then from the mold we'd make a perfect replica in fresh plaster, reconstructing the bits that were damaged or weathered with time so the final result is as near a perfect example of the original design as we can possibly make it," he added.

With the introduction, coffee and biscuits over, now came the hair-raising bit. "Hope you like heights, because the lift's round the other side of the building and the most interesting work is being done on this side up by the roof," said Mr Borup.

As I nervously began my climb up a narrow, aluminum step-ladder which seemed to stretch up endlessly through the holes in the scaffolding, I felt like Jack on the Beanstalk. Escorted by a Finnish workman who nimbly scaled up the ladder, I followed rather more cautiously. I didn't dare look down until, after what seemed ages, we reached the roof where you get a spectacular view of the city's Summer Garden, Saviour on the Blood cathedral and Paul I's palace (Engineers' Castle).

As we clambered over the scaffolding we found a small group of men and women in white overalls carefully adding wet plaster to a frieze of classical Roman figures which filled the 1.5 meter spaces between columns. In all there are 44 of these bas-reliefs stretching around the building and they were executed by the sculptor V. Demuth Valinovsky in the 1820s. The work looked painstaking and the sculptures were extremely detailed considering how far up they are. After all, who's going to notice the detail from the ground at that height?

Inspection carried out, it was then a case of clambering over the new, shiny, stainless steel roof towards the air-conditioning system. We located the skylight and clambered into the Russian Museum's "attic" which was stiflingly hot.

Here I was greeted by a myriad of red-painted pipes, tubes and steel grilles hanging above and surrounding the green tinted glass below. With the constant hum of the air conditioning it was not unlike being in a ship's engine-room or perhaps the famous Boborg Center in Paris.

Then it was on to inspect restoration work carried out on the small and ornate church located on the other side of the building. Again, it was a case of clambering over yards of scaffolding, crawling agonizingly down one set of ladders only to find more on the other side.

The stomach-churning experience was worth it. The church was a real gem and served the building when it was the Mikhailovsky Palace. As old layers of wallpaper were stripped off during the restoration some remarkable frescoes were found in astonishingly good condition.

The church was shut up in Soviet times and served as a storeroom. This ill-usage damaged the ornate and beautiful parquet floor which the firm is now replacing and restoring to its former grandeur. One of the reasons why the Russian Museum is so lavish and ornate is that it was not originally a museum but a palace built for the Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, son of Emperor Paul I. After he died in 1849 his widow, Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna (1806-73) owned the palace which was frequented by many liberal Russian statesmen and men of culture.

The last person to own the palace was the Grand Duchess Yekaterina Mikhailovna until 1895, when it was transferred into the possession of the treasury which turned it into a museum. It now houses Russia's finest collection of Russian painting and graphic art from the 13th-20th centuries.

Once completed, the restoration work is expected to last 100 years, provided that essential weather-proofing, painting and maintenance is carried out every 20 years. One of the world's greatest museums is ready for the Millennium.

• What: The Russian Museum
• Where: 4 Inzhenernaya Ulitsa (Ploshchad Istkusstv, to the rear of Pushkin's statue)
• When: Daily 10am-6pm, except Mon 10am-5pm (closed Tues)
• Cost: 29,000 ($6) roubles for foreigners.

  There are currently two new exhibitions by contemporary artists Herman Yegoshin and Leonid Borisov.