Exploring Catherine The Great’s Palaces in Saint Petersburg is a feast for the eyes – grand rooms of amber, marble and gold, fit for an Empress who’s reign is referred to as the ‘Golden Age of Russia‘.
If you’ve watched the Sky / HBO television series ‘Catherine The Great‘ starring Helen Mirren, you’ll see many of these palaces featured across the four episodes.
‘The Russian Versailles‘, built for Peter The Great (Catherine’s husbands Grandfather), is located just outside of the city overlooking The Baltic Sea. The vast garden of Peterhof Palace begins at The Grand Cascade, a series of dazzling gold statues and fountains.
Audio Guide Tsarskoye Selo
In the summer you could spend all day wandering through the Lower Gardens of Peterhof to enjoy the creative trick fountains, sculptures and pretty flower beds. In the Catherine The Great television series you’ll recognise Peterhof’s yellow and white facade, particularly during the first episode.
Now home to one of the largest art museum’s in the world, The Winter Palace is located in the centre of Saint Petersburg and, as the name suggests, is where the Russian Emperors would spend the winter season. Picturing the grand balls for 18th century nobility is easy as you ascend the grand staircase and enter the throne room.
Catherine The Great transformed The Winter Palace by adding more wings to her own taste and house her growing art collection. Today The Hermitage has works by Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Michelangelo.
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The bright blue and white colours of The Catherine Palace makes a striking first impression as you pass through the town of Pushkin on the outskirts of the city. It was Catherine The Great’s summer residence and was originally built for her predecessor Catherine I in 1717. The Great Hall or ‘Light Gallery’ is illuminated by hundreds of (now electric) candles that bounce off the mirrors and fill the room with a golden glow.
The staterooms are uniquely designed in vivid colours of red, green and blue with the remarkable amber room being named “the eighth wonder of the world“. Unfortunately World War II was a disaster for the palaces and most of what we see today is a reconstruction of how it originally was.
In the Catherine The Great television series Catherine Palace is used frequently – the Great Hall, Amber Room, Cameron Gallery and lake-side garden (when Catherine and Potemkin reunite) all make a feature.
Summer Palace Of The Peter Great Hi Res Stock Photography And Images
It took 32 types of marble to construct the Marble Palace, and it was given as a gift by Catherine The Great to Count Grigory Orlov for his support during the early years of her reign. The palace is located on the bank of the river Neva and can be easily spotted on a canal cruise of Saint Petersburg. A canal cruise will also take you past other palaces and mansions across the city, like Peter The Great’s Summer Palace and Gardens.
Exploring Catherine The Great’s Palaces in Saint Petersburg was a breathtaking five-star experience spanning two days with Ludmila Tours. Having a local expert bring to life the stories of this fascinating period of Russian history made it all the more memorable.
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Pushkin Summer Palace Tour
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.The Catherine Palace is named after Catherine I, the wife of Peter the Great, who ruled Russia for two years after her husband's death. Originally a modest two-storey building commissioned by Peter for Catherine in 1717, the Catherine Palace owes its awesome grandeur to their daughter, Empress Elizabeth, who chose Tsarskoe Selo as her chief summer residence. Starting in 1743, the building was reconstructed by four different architects, before Bartholomeo Rastrelli, Chief Architect of the Imperial Court, was instructed to completely redesign the building on a scale to rival Versailles.
The resultant palace, completed in 1756, is nearly 1km in circumference, with elaborately decorated blue-and-white facades featuring gilded atlantes, caryatids and pilasters designed by German sculptor Johann Franz Dunker, who also worked with Rastrelli on the palace's original interiors. In Elizabeth's reign it took over 100kg of gold to decorate the palace exteriors, an excess that was deplored by Catherine the Great when she discovered the state and private funds that had been lavished on the building.
The interiors of the Catherine Palace are no less spectacular. The so-called Golden Enfilade of state rooms, designed by Rastrelli, is particularly renowned and forms the focus of the palace tour. Guests enter via the State Staircase which, although it blends effortlessly with the rococo grandeur of Rastrelli's interiors, in fact dates from the 1860s. With its ornate banisters and reclining marble cupids, it gives a taste of what is to come. The Great Hall, also known as the Hall of Light, measures nearly 1, 000 square meters, and occupies the full width of the palace so that there are superb views on either side. The large arched windows provide enough light to relieve the vast quantity of gilded stucco decorating the walls, and the entire ceiling is covered by a monumental fresco entitled The Triumph of Russia. Using similar techniques but on a smaller scale, the White Dining Room is equally luxurious but, like many of the rooms in the palace, its grandeur is softened by the presence of a beautiful traditional blue-and-white tiled stove in the corner.
Catherine Palace, Tsarskoe Selo, St. Petersburg
Other highlights of the Grand Enfilade include the Portrait Hall, which contains remarkably good portraits of both Catherine and Elizabeth, the Picture Gallery, in which almost every inch of wall space is covered with paneling comprising 17
To create this extraordinary chamber, Rastrelli used the panels of amber mosaic originally destined for an Amber Cabinet at Konigsberg Castle and presented to Peter the Great by Friedrich-Wilhelm I of Prussia, and surrounded them with gilded carving, mirrors, more amber panels created by Florentine and Russian craftsman (comprising a total of 450kg of amber), and further mosaics of Ural and Caucasus gemstones. The room was completed in 1770. Due to the fragility of the materials used, a caretaker was employed constantly to maintain and repair the decorations, and major restoration was undertaken three times in the 19
Century. The room was used to house a substantial collection of amber-work and Chinese porcelain. In 1941, when German troops took Tsarskoe Selo, the Amber Room was dismantled in 36 hours, and shipped to Konigsberg in a tawdry pretence at historical fidelity. As the Nazi war machine crumbled, the panels were crated up and moved out of danger, but their eventual fate is unknown.
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In 1982, the order was given to begin the recreation of the Amber Room, a process that took over 20 years and cost more than $12 million. Opened in 2003 by President Vladimir Putin and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the restored Amber Room is a truly unique monument, and a testament to the painstaking care of the craftsmen who worked on it.
Further on in the Catherine Palace, the most noteworthy interiors are those in the so-called Cameron Rooms, the suites decorated in the reign of Catherine the Great by her favourite architect, Charles Cameron. His penchant for classical symmetry and his superb taste for colour are evident in the charming Green Dining Room, originally fitted for Catherine's son Paul, and the delightful Blue Drawing Room, with its blue-and-white painted-silk wallpaper and superb painted ceiling. More flamboyant but equally charming, the Chinese Blue Drawing Room also boasts exquisite painted-silk wallpaper featuring intricate Chinese landscapes.
Thanks above all to the Amber Room, the Catherine Palace is one of St.Petersburg's most popular visitor attractions, and queues in the summer months can be daunting. All visitors are obliged to follow a guided tour, which is in Russian unless otherwise arranged in advance.
Great Hall Or Hall Of Light, Catherine Or Summer Palace, Tsarskoe Selo, Pushkin, St Petersburg, Russia Stock Photo
October through late April entry hours: 10.00-17.00 Wednesday to Sunday, 10.00-20.00 on working Mondays. Closed on Tuesdays and the last Monday of each month.
Entry hours for individual visitors during national and school holidays: 12.00-17.00 (12.00-20.00 on Mondays). All other times are reserved for organized groups.
Palace tickets include Catherine Park entrance fee and are available from 10.00 only at two entrances to Catherine Park (Main Entrance near Lyceum and Hermitage Kitchen). Daily quantity of tickets is limited.
St. Petersburg Attractions. Catherine Palace
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