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To carry out his design, in 1797 he commissioned Vassily Bazhenov to build the palace around the Field of Mars with the Summer Garden serving as a park. Bazhenov appears to have come to the tsars attention through their masonic ties (Shvidkovskii 112). Paul himself even sketched a possible design for his castle. However, the Summer Palace of Elizabeth Petrovna already occupied the site for his proposed castle. So, before any work could be accomplished Elizabeth's palace had to be razed to the ground and removed. The order for the construction of the castle came less than one month after Catherine's death. Bazehnov was later succeeded by Paul's favorite architect, an Florentine by the name of Vikenty, Vincenzo, Brenna (Shvidkovskii 112). Brenna studied in both Rome and Paris. He worked in Poland and came to Russia in 1783 to design the residences of the heirs to the throne at Pavlovsk and Gatchina. Brenna made changes to the original plan to suit his own style. He add much more detail to the façade. He changed the interior layout and ornamentation of the rooms with lavish decoration (Shvidkovskii 112). Such decoration and ornamentation included tapestries, paintings, sculptures, and wood-carving. All four facades of the castle were changed so that each one was a different style.

The first foundation stone was laid in February 1797. The work on the castle continued uninterrupted day and night until its completion in 1800; the builders used torches when it became too dark to see. The resulting structure was a sequestered, impregnable building with all the qualities of a real castle; right down to the massive square design and the rounded corners representing small towers (Shvidkovskii 116). The central courtyard is octagonal in shape and most of the rooms of the castle face into it. The entire castle was painted red, Paul's favorite color, perhaps a portent for the future.

The main facade, the entrance side, has a heavy stone portico with a set-back attic (Shvidkovskii 116). It is decorated with two obelisks surmounted by military trophies. The relief on the pediment, gable along the roof of the building, is an allegory of the Glory of Russia (Shvidkovskii 111). This facade contains the only entrance to the central courtyard and is invisible from the Field of Mars. The ground floor is rather bulky and weighty. It has a sort of sub-basement structure with diamond pointed rustications, shaped masonary that is rough hewn on top with diamond shaped patterns cut into it, as a the wall facing (Shvidkovskii 116). The northern facade faces the Summer Garden. The most prominent feature on this side is the large central balcony on the second floor. A Doric colonnade, a row of columns that have have a simple ribbed pattern on the top and bottom, supports the balcony. A set of wide stairs leads up to the colonnade. The attic decor of both of the facades is decorated with trophies, medallions bearing the emperors monogram in luxurious frames (Shvidkovskii 116).

The original palace was surrounded by water. The Moika and Fontanka Rivers presently bound two of the sidea. The canals that were dug from the ground protected the other two sides. The Resurrection Canal, Voskresensky Kanal, was parallel to the Moika, and now runs in pipes under the street. The Church Canal, Tserkovny Kanal, used to run parallel to the Fontanka until it was filled in and capped by Gardner Street (Doroshinskaya 174). The castle was connected to the rest of the city by mobile drawbridges. These drawbridges were covered by guns and were raised at night when Tsar Paul I went to bed, approximately nine o'clock (Doroshinskaya 174).

The approach to the castle was originally built upon a rectilinear axis with two rows of long, low buildings (Shvidkovskii 116). These buildings were the stables. Farther on down there were two octagonal pavilions. The approach then projects out onto an open square in front of the main facade. The open square was dominated by the equestrian statue at its center. This statue was of Peter the Great and was cast in 1746 by Carlo Rastrelli, the father of the builder of the Winter Palace. The statue was begun during Peter's lifetime and was completed using his death mask. The statue was placed in front of the castle in 1800 upon completion. It was a traditional sculpture and had not the significance of the Bronze Horseman which was located not far away (Doroshinskaya 176). The inscription on this horseman reads: "to great-grandfather, from great-grandson."

The opening ceremony took place on the feast day of Archangel Michael. The story is that the archangel Michael appeared to Paul in a dream and ordered him to build him a chapel on the spot of the castle dedicated to him for protection. To satisfy this vision Paul built a church with a golden spire within the castle (Doroshinskaya 174). Further rumors have Michael guarding the castle alongside Paul's guardsmen while he lived there.

Paul's paranoia was such that he even looked into the possibility that the security of his castle may be compromised. To flee from assailants that may possibly be in his castle he had a secret passageway built into the hallway outside his bedroom (Drumfield 167). There were even tunnels under the Field of Mars to the barracks in case troops needed to be taken into the castle covertly or if it was under siege. Paul must have felt pretty secure in the safety of his new fortress, seeing that he only took two Cossacks as his personal bodyguard. Paul tempted fate too far with his self assured safety and arrogance. On March 2, 1801, forty days after he took up residence, he was murdered by his guardsmen and courtiers inside his own bedroom. The assassins gained entrance by bribing a guard of Paul's to leave a drawbridge down for them. Paul was never able to use his beloved secret passageway.

Alexander I, Paul's son and heir, refused to live in the palace with it's reputation for regicide. The castle then passed through a variety of functions: a barracks of the Imperial Guard, the headquarters for an institute for the blind, the Chancellery of the Ministry of Instruction and Religious affairs, and finally fell into the hands of the military, ironically enough (Knopf 229). In 1822, the castle was given to the engineer corps of the army and the School for Military Engineer's opened, and from henceforth the castle was known as the Engineer's castle.

Surely the most illustrious of the graduates of this school was Dostoyevski. In 1837, he entered the school when he was sixteen years old. He was not really interested in the military sciences and suffered under the endless drills (Doroshinskaya 175). He was rather a book lover, and one of his favorite places to study was a window embrasure, large sill, in the corner room where his company was quartered. The corner room is given the significance as the source of his preference for all of the corner apartments and buildings that he lived in while in Petersburg (Doroshinskaya 175). In 1841, he was able to enter a class for officers and was given private quarters. In 1843, he graduated and then went forth towards an illustrious writing career.

The Engineer's Castle with its grisly history has gained a foothold in myth and stories. Nikolay Leskov was a nineteenth century author that took the trouble to document certain incidents at the Engineer's Castle. The Engineer's Castle lent itself to all sorts of tales; the most popular of which are ghost stories. The older cadets often thought it was funny to scare the younger cadets. One such incident went a little to far. One young man went into the most "haunted" part of the castle, Paul's bedroom, and wearing a bed sheet stood in front of the large window overlooking the street. The pedestrians saw this "ghost" and were frightened of it. They were even more frightened of it when it gestured and responded to them. The young cadet was eventually caught and given "exemplary corporal punishment (Leskov 76)." He then disappeared from the school entirely, most likely expelled. The younger cadets believed the rumor that he had been beaten to death for scaring a high-ranking personage. The bedroom was later opened and given over to other purposes unknown. This is only one tale of many that were spawned around the myth of the Paul's haunted castle.

The castle is currently home to the immense collection of books, magazines, and documents on the history of the Navy, the Central Naval Library, Tsentralnaya Voenno-Morskaya Biblioteka (Doroshinskaya 176).

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