Cameron, Charles (c. 1740-1812)

Scottish architect. His work was classical in spirit and very scholarly. He trained under Isaac Ware (1717-1766) in the Palladian tradition before being summoned to Russia by Catherine the Great in 1779. He decorated the palace complex at Tsarskoe Selo (now Pushkin), rebuilt and laid out the park of the royal villa at Pavlovsk (rebuilding it with two temples, an aviary, and a colonnade), and planned the village of Sofia, for which he also designed the church.

After a period in England (1796-1800), he returned to Russia as chief architect of the Admiralty, and from 1803 executed many buildings, including the Naval Hospital and barracks at Kronstadt (1805). His work here was largely destroyed in World War II.

He made an intensive study of Roman baths and wrote The Baths of the Romans (1772). He was an admirer of the French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau, whose drawings he used for his work in Russia.