Pushkin (Tsarskoye Selo), Ekaterina's palace and park

During the excursion you visit Tsarskoye Selo, Catherina’s palace and have an opportunity to walk around parks. Tsarskoye Selo is a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility 26 km south from the center of St. Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin and of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments. Its name "Tsarskoye Selo" means "the royal village". In 1708, Peter the Great gave the estate to his wife—future Empress Catherine I—as a present. It was Catherine who started to develop the place as a royal country residence. Her daughter, Empress Elizabeth and her architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli were largely responsible for the building of the Catherine Palace. Later Empress Catherine II of Russia and her architect Charles Cameron extended the Palace building what is now known as the famous Cameron Gallery. Currently, there are two imperial palaces: the baroque Catherine Palace with the adjacent Catherine Park and the neoclassical Alexander Palace with the adjacent Alexander Park. The Catherine Palace is surrounded by a regular (French) garden and a landscape (English) park, with such 18th-century structures as Dutch Admiralty, Creaking Pagoda, Chesme Column, Rumyantsev Obelisk, and Marble Bridge. The landscape Alexander Park has several Chinoiserie structures, notably the Chinese Village. By the end of the 18th century, Tsarskoye Selo became a popular place of summer residence among the nobility In 1811, Alexander I opened the celebrated Lyceum next door to the Catherine Palace. Aleksandr Pushkin was one of the first graduates, followed by Alexander Gorchakov and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. The literary traditions of Tsarskoye Selo were continued in the 20th century by such notable poets as Anna Akhmatova and Innokenty Annensky. After the war, Tsarskoye Selo has been painstakingly reconstructed up to the present. Many rooms in the Catherine Palace have been restored, but much work on the palatial church and the Alexander Palace is still under way.

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