Charles Cameron (1745 – 19 March 1812) was a Scottish architect who made an illustrious career at the court of Catherine II of Russia. Cameron, a practitioner of early neoclassical architecture, was the chief architect of Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk palaces and the adjacent new town of Sophia from his arrival in Russia in 1779 to Catherine's death in 1796. Cameron concentrated exclusively on country palaces and landscape gardens. Twice dismissed by Paul of Russia during the Battle of the Palaces, Cameron enjoyed a brief revival of his career under Alexander I in 1803–1805. All his indisputable tangible works "can be encompassed in a day's tour".

Cameron's British neoclassicism was an isolated episode in Russian architecture, then dominated by Italian artists (Francesco Rastrelli, Antonio Rinaldi, Giacomo Quarenghi, Vincenzo Brenna, Carlo Rossi, and many others). According to his first biographer Georgy Lukomsky, "Cameron remains one of the greatest exponents of British taste and British Art abroad, and if he has been so completely forgotten in his own country, it would seem only right to rectify this omission".

Howard Colvin ranked Cameron "one of the major urban architects of the eighteenth century ... an accomplished designer and decorator in a neoclassical style that has affinities with that of Robert Adam. His style is sufficiently individual to exonerate him from the imputation of being merely an imitator... Although still a Palladian, Cameron was a pioneer of Greek Revival in Russia." Apart from the well-researched Catherinian period (1779–1796), Cameron's life story remains poorly documented, not in the least due to Cameron's own efforts to shake off the bad reputation he had earned in the 1770s in London

Details of Cameron’s origins are uncertain. He was probably the son of Walter Cameron, a London carpenter. However, he claimed descent from the Camerons of Lochiel, a Scottish clan deeply involved in the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Walter Cameron was certainly friendly with Dr Archibald Cameron, the last Jacobite to be executed and a brother of the chief Donald Cameron of Lochiel. Walter visited Archibald shortly before his execution and may have assisted his wife and children, one of whom was named Charles. Talbot Rice claimed that Charles Cameron was in fact this son of Dr. Archibald. Cameron used the Lochiel coat of arms for his personal bookplate, although modern researchers since David Talbot Rice question his claim of Lochiel lineage. Researchers also disagree on the exact year of Cameron's birth, which may be either 1743, 1745 or 1746.

Cameron trained in London with his father and with the architect Isaac Ware. After Ware's death in 1766 Cameron settled on continuing his late master's work on a new edition of Lord Burlington's Fabbriche Antiche, a project that required personal studies and surveys of ancient Roman architecture. He spent 1767 in London, preparing prints of works by Andrea Palladio, and arrived in Rome in 1768. There, he surveyed the Baths of Titus and Nero's Domus Aurea, digging into subterranean remains that were rediscovered only in the 20th century. According to Dmitry Shvidkovsky, Cameron met in Rome with another Charles Cameron, a Jacobite and a true member of the Lochiel clan, (likely Dr Archibald's son) and "borrowed" the life story of the latter to embellish his own. Cameron returned from Italy around 1769 and published the results of his studies in 1772 (reissues 1774, 1775) under the title The Baths of the Romans explained and illustrated... with proper scientific commentaries in English and French.

Cameron's life between 1769 and his departure to Russia in 1779 remains barely known. Archives attest to his involvement in only one construction contract in London, for an Adam style building in Hanover Square (1770–1775). Walter Cameron, the main contractor, was ruined by litigation with the property owner and had to sell his son's art collection to raise funds. Charles sued his father, who was jailed in Fleet Prison for debt. In 1791, when Cameron applied for a membership in the Architect's Club of London, he was barred admission due to this and other episodes that had stained his reputation in England.

Empress Catherine's tastes in architecture evolved from Rococo and Gothic Revival architecture in the first decade of her reign to emerging Neoclassicism in the 1780s. She leaned to French variety of neoclassicism (Clerisseau, Ledoux) mixed with ancient Roman motifs. Catherine, perhaps the first of European monarchs, realized that the emerging style had the potential to become a definitive form of imperial art. She spared no expense in hiring foreign architects and craftsmen trained in the neoclassical manner. She instructed Baron Melchior Grimm, her European agent in matters of art and antiques, to hire Italian architects because "the Frenchmen we have here know too much and build dreadful houses – because they know too much." These Italians, Giacomo Quarenghi and the relatively unknown Giacomo Trombara [it], arrived in Russia after Cameron.