 | ||
The Imperial School of Jurisprudence (Russian: Императорское училище правоведения) was, along with the Page Corps, the most prestigious school for boys in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire.
The school for would-be imperial administrators was founded by Duke Peter of Oldenburg in 1835. The classes were accommodated in six buildings along the Fontanka Quay. The premises were extensively renovated in 1893–95 and 1909–10, when the main building acquired its distinctive cupola. After the October Revolution of 1917, the school was disbanded, but its memory survives in the nursery rhyme about Chizhik-Pyzhik.
Among the instructors were the leading lawyers of Imperial Russia, such as Anatoly Koni and Włodzimierz Spasowicz. Boys studied in the school for six or seven years.
The graduates of the School of Jurisprudence include Ivan Aksakov, Aleksey Apukhtin, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Vladimir Stasov, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his younger brother Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky.