Beretti

Russian and Ukrainian architects.

Vikentii Ivanovich Beretti. Born June 3 (14), 1781; died Aug. 6 (18), 1842, in Kiev. He was born into the family of an Italian who settled in St. Petersburg and studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts (1798–1804). He was an academician from 1809 and a professor from 1831 to 1837. In St. Petersburg he worked on the construction of the exchange building with J. Thomas de Thomon and also worked on the Committee for Construction and Hydraulic Works. From 1837 he worked in Kiev, where a university (1837–43), an observatory (from 1840), and the Institute for Wellborn Girls (1838–43, today the October Palace) were being built according to his plans. The university building in the empire style became the center for the plan of a large Kiev district.

Aleksandr Vikent’evich Beretti. Born 1816, in St. Petersburg; died 1895, in Kiev. He was the son of Vikentii Ivanovich Beretti. From 1827 he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and in 1840 he became an academician. He taught the history of architecture at the University of Kiev. He designed the building of the former First Gymnasium (1850) and other buildings and participated in the planning of the Vladimirskii Cathedral (1850–96; all of these buildings in Kiev). Twenty-three school buildings in a number of Ukrainian cities were based on Beretti’s plans.