Catherine Palace — Attraction in Pushkin

During the reign of Peter the Great's daughter, Empress Elizabeth, Mikhail Zemtsov designed a new palace and work began in 1744. In 1745, Zemtsov's pupil, Andrei Kvasov, working with Savva Chevakinsky, expanded the palace to be 300 m long. This included a Middle House, two side wings, a chapel, and the Conservatory Hall, all connected by four galleries with hanging gardens. Then in 1751, Bartolomeo Rastrelli undertook a major reconstruction effort, integrating several buildings, giving the palace its distinctive snow-white columns, sky-blue walls, with gilded stucco, chapel cupolas, and sculptures requiring almost 100 kg of gold. Rastrelli's interiors were based on a Baroque style. Sculptor Johann Franz Dunker, master gilder Leprince, and interior painter Giuseppe Valeriani were some of the distinguished artists. Other notable rooms included the Chinese Room with its porcelain and Coromandel lacquer panels, the Portrait Hall, the Light Gallery, and the Amber Room with Andreas Schlüter's amber panels, while 5 anterooms were connected to the Great Hall, which measured 860 square meters. Construction ended in 1756, when the palace included 40 state apartments, and more than 100 private and service rooms. A New Garden was added, while the Old Garden was improved with a deepening of the Big Pond, connected to springs 6 km away, the addition of a Toboggan Slide, plus the Hermitage, Grotto, Island, and Mon Bijou pavilions. Baroque architecture gave way to Neoclassical architecture in the 1770s, when Tsarskoye Selo became the summer residence of Catherine the Great's court. Yuri Velten redesigned the south facade of the palace, while the side wings were converted from one-storey into four-storey Zubov and Chapel Annexes. The Main Staircase was replaced by state and private rooms such as the Chinese Room, decorated with Charles Cameron designs, and a new staircase built in the center where the Chinese Room had stood. Cameron's 1780s interior designs included the Arabesque Room with arabesque painted ceiling, walls, and doors, while Greek and Roman classical motifs were used on the wall vertical panels. Cameron's Lyons Room used French golden-yellow silk on the walls, while the doors, stoves and panels used Lake Baikal lapis lazuli. The empress' Bedroom used Wedgwood jasper bas-reliefs designed by John Flaxman and George Stubbs. The Blue Room, or "Snuff-box", incorporated white and bright blue glass on the walls. Giacomo Quarenghi designed the Mirror and Silver Rooms in 1789, while Rastrelli's hanging gardens were pulled...

The entrance to Catherine Park + Palace entrance was surprisingly expensive at 2,500 rubles per person, with no discounted rates for seniors or teenagers. For a family of four, the total came to 10,000 rubles; significantly higher than the 1,000 to 1,500 rubles per person stated on various online sources. We were quite shocked by the difference, but having traveled an hour from the city center, we decided to proceed with the purchase to make the most of our visit.

Catherine Park is an absolutely beautiful place to visit vast, serene, & filled with breathtaking scenery. The park grounds are incredibly wide, offering plenty of space to wander, relax, and enjoy the fresh air. You can easily spend 2 to 3 hours strolling through its gardens, lakes, and open spaces without feeling rushed.

However, when it comes to food & coffee, the options inside are very limited. There are no luxurious cafés or high quality restaurants on site, & it’s difficult to find anything kosher or Muslim friendly. I would recommend bringing your own snacks or eating before you come.

When you buy your ticket (it took us around 45 mns to buy the tickets on site) you’ll be assigned a time slot to enter Catherine Palace itself usually about two hours after your purchase. Even though we were lost in communication and didn’t understand much (we used sign language and translation from our side, we then thought is actually a good system, as it gives you enough time to explore the park & surrounding areas before your tour begins; but in our case we had another place scheduled to go after the palace, which put us on an edge where we had to shift things from our schedule in order to actually visit the palace itself.

A key tip: there are two types of entry slots and two separate palace entrances. Make sure you know which entrance your ticket corresponds to, otherwise you might wait in the wrong line only to be redirected.

The palace tour itself is relatively short,,, around 30–45 minutes & visitors are only shown part of the building, not the entire interior. So expect to spend much more of your day outdoors than indoors.

All in all, Catherine Park is stunning & well worth a visit, especially if you enjoy beautiful landscapes and leisurely walks. Just plan ahead for food & be mindful of your palace entry details to make the most of...

The Amber Room

An 18th century wonder of the world, lost in WWII, re-created at the Catherine Palace. One of history’s great lost treasures, the spectacular Baroque Amber Room once dazzled visitors to the czar’s Winter House in St. Petersburg, where more than six tons of amber were arranged against mirrors and gold leaf into an enormous, golden gallery. For most of history, the area formerly known as Prussia was the world’s most significant producer of amber, and it is still associated with the area today. The golden-colored fossilized tree sap can actually be found in locations all around the world, but has been famed and traded in Eastern Europe since at least Roman times. Designed between 1701-1711, the original Amber Room was first installed in Berlin, then given as a gift to Peter the Great, moved to Russia and expanded until it covered an estimated 180 square feet. In 1755 it was again moved, this time to the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg. During WWII, desperate officials at the Catherine Palace hid the national treasure behind wallpaper, in an attempt to stave off the art-crazed looters of the incoming Nazi army. It was, however, all for naught and the Nazis promptly made off with crates full of amber, and brought it back to Germany where it was triumphantly exhibited at Königsberg Castle. That is, it was triumphantly exhibited until they too felt the other shoe drop, and this time officials ripped out the magnificent panels and hid them away…somewhere. Since the end of WWII, historians, art lovers, and treasure hunters alike have sought the lost Amber Room, looking in silver mines and shallow waters, investigating stories of shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea and secret caves in the German countryside. It has never been found. Most experts today agree that the room is most likely gone forever, lost in the fires that consumed Königsberg Castle after the fall of Nazi Germany. The site where the Königsberg Castle once stood is now covered by a massive and strange building known as the “House of Soviets”, built in 1960, but incomplete and empty...