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Cultural tour - Educational tours - Musical tour - Winter tour
Alexander Palace - Novgorod - Pavlovsk - Peterhof - Tsarskoye Selo
 
Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin) is one of St. Petersburg's magnificent
Imperial residences. The estate boasts a beautiful landscape park,
dotted with architectural gems, and the center piece is the magnificent
blue, white and gold Catherine Palace.
Named after its creator, Empress Catherine I, the second wife of Peter
the Great, the original palace was built between 1717 and 1723 by
the architect Braunstein. The palace was expanded later in the
century and given a new, richly decorated Baroque facade by the
architect Francesco Bartholomeo Rastrelli. The Catherine Palace
houses some beautiful Baroque interiors, including the luxurious
unique Amber Room, whose priceless amber panels were stolen by Nazi
troops during WWII, but which have now been painstakingly recreated
by Russian craftsmen.
Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, preferred
Tsarskoye Selo to many of the other Imperial residences around
St. Petersburg, as did the famous Catherine the Great herself.
Catherine particularly enjoyed the Neo-Classical Cameron Gallery
section of the palace, built by the Scottish architect Charles
Cameron between 1781 and 1786. Adjacent to the gallery and also
worthy of note is Cameron's Cold Baths building, an extravagant
bath house of semi-precious stones.
Forming the core of the estate, Tsarskoye Selo boasts almost
600 hectares of beautiful parkland. In front of the Catherine Palace
visitors can enjoy formal gardens with finely trimmed trees and
bushes, geometrically designed flowerbeds and fine marble statues.
This section of the park is also home to various structures,
including the Grotto, the Upper and Lower Baths and Rastrelli's
delightful blue and white Hermitage building.
Beyond the Cameron Gallery and to the south of the Catherine Palace
lies the wilder, more natural section of the estate's park.
Focused on a large lake, where visitors can hire boats in the
summer, the park is filled with meandering streams, bridges and
monuments. These include the Admiralty, the Chesma Column,
the Marble Bridge, and the Pyramid, where Catherine the Great
liked to bury her favorite dogs. One of the park's most elegant
sculptures ("The Girl with a Broken Jug") stands by the lakeside
and depicts a young lady sitting near a brook and grieving over
a broken jug. The sculpture is incorporated into the flowing waters
of an artisian well.
Prior to the 1917 revolution, the Great Palace served as the summer
residence of the Russian emperors. In 1918 a museum of art and
history opened here. During the Nazi occupation the palaces and
monuments of Tsarskoye Selo suffered immense damage and since 1957
repairs and restoration work have been conducted.
The museum houses remarkable collections of paintings, porcelain,
furniture and fabrics. Visitors can explore Rastrelli's Grand Hall
in the Great Palace and the Portrait Hall with its canvases by
Dutch, Flemish, Italian and French artists. The recreation of
the world-famous Amber Room has just been finished in 2003.
In terms, of its artistic workmanship, it is in no way inferior
to and perhaps, in some respects, even superior to the original.
Tsarskoye Selo Photo gallery
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Russian Tours - Details and Prices - Essential Information -
Russian Newsletter Archive
Site Map
Address: 907 Bradwell St., Hinesville, GA 31313-2204
Phone: +1 (912) 368-0668, Fax: +1 (912) 877-4897
e-mail: info@mmarttravel.com
www.mmarttravel.com
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