Do I fess up at the start that in fact i didn't go into the interiors of the latter? It was cleaning day for most palaces and I forgot to check the domestics schedule. Consequently it was a dull (and rather expensive after hiring a driver for the day) trip out to the towns of Pushkin and Pavlovsk to see the two palaces.
still, I got bracing country air and an English driver- so while the gods weren't smiling on the towns as they drummed rain into them- they were at least smiling at me! Given that I could hardly say that the Pavlovsk Palace was a highlight- after all the tradesmen entrance was as far as I got- let me concentrate firstly on Catherine Palace.
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| Entrance to Catherine's Palace |
Now CatherineI was married to Peter the Great- says it all really. I wonder if you call your husband "oh great one" every day of your marriage whether our divorce rate would be what it is. Suffice to say, they never divorced- but then she did go and squat in another place! Catherine's Palace.
Admittedly the land was a bequest from him and thus she built a little place for herself. And there we have another issue. You see the 1000 places to see before you die book says that she built herself a "modest summer residence" in 1917. It was her daughter- Empress Elizabeth- famous for subsequently building the Winter Palace for herself- who replaced Catherine's home in 1756 with a grander palace designed by her favourite architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli which she subsequently named after her mother.
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A small section of the length of the Palace
I love that the 1000 places to see before you die book says "it set a new tone for royal excess." I think that is some gross understatement. Forget the benchmarks Czars set in Russia, by any standards anywhere around the globe this palace would be deemed an ostentatious display of wealth destined to be seen by a privileged few. At last, until Empress Elizabeth built the Winter palace for herself. As a tourist remarked to me "you can see why the peasants revolted."
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| The outhouse |
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| the formal garden fronting the entrance |
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Me- in the great hall! |
This is rococo taken to the extreme. This is a russian billionaire not even holding a candle to this site. This is Saddam turning green with envy. As the guide told me- 1100 feet of palace and 200 pounds of gold on the exterior of the palace alone. Anterooms with silk wallpaper, grandiose ceiling murals, a room full of solid inlay amber (sorry no photos permitted), gold and mirrors and more gold and more mirrors.
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| Close up of mirrors |
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| Entrance to the 1st antechamber |
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| The great hall |
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| 1st antechamber |
And in the war- turned into a hospital and then an orphanage. Burnt to the crisp in part by bombs, looted by ignorants in others, and little remaining by the end of World War 2. And so a complete reconstruction occurred- everything completely rebuilt and replicated from photos and sketches. One entire fabrication.
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| one of the private sitting rooms for the Empress |
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| White state dining room |
Including the Amber Room which cost just under $12m spent in one room alone to reconstruct. It is a truly magnificent job. No idea where they got the money- it wasn’t from ticket sales at circa £10 a ticket. However…job well done on this one. Not that I saw the original- but the new version is amazingly spectacular. Sadly...no photos allowed in this room
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| I think this is the small white dining room |
Im not sure what all these Chinese looking ceramic additions are in the corners of the rooms- but they appeared a number of times throughout and the audio guide provided no explanation and the "watchers" in the room didn't speak English.
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| Bedroom |
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| The very simple study of Peter the Great |
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| The church on the premises |
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| another "outhouse" around the ornamental lake |
From there onto Pavslovsk palace in the next town. Where the modest mother Catherine gave a palace to her son Paul in 1777. He didn’t seem to suffer from the excesses of his female sibling and this is small and normal... if one can use such words for a palace. Burnt by Hitler to a shell it took 25 years to get it back to where it is now- and like the Catherine Palace- is in essence, one big fake. But a good fake! Anyhow, as I said in the beginning, due to the domestics needing to take control of the palace for a day all I saw was its façade.
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| Entrance to Pavlovsk Palace |
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| Entrance shot again |
Worthwhile, yes definitely. And hire a guide! It’s a worthy inclusion both of them in the
1000 places to see before you die book. (ill give Paul’s palace the benefit of the doubt).
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