Pushkin. tsarskoye selo: catherine palace

The ensemble of the Catherine Palace with its unique Amber room and the adjacent Catherine Park are a kind of hallmark of the city  Pushkin.

 The Catherine Palace is the compositional center of the Catherine Park and one of its main decorations. The majestic building occupies the Central part of Tsarskoye Selo.

 see more pictures here.

The history of the Palace begins in 1717. The facades of the Palace have a length of 300 meters, and the gilding on exterior and interior decorations left nearly 100 kilograms of pure gold. 

There are many luxury rooms in this Palace. When you are walking here it looks like you got into a fairy tale. You can see vintage Royal furniture, famous paintings and of course wonderful interiors of the Palace. Each hall differs from another and has its own 
features. You can feel the atmosphere of that time and imagine how people lived here. 

The most famous part of Catherine Palace is Amber room. 

The amber room was created by master Gottfried Tussauds for the Prussian king Friedrich I. The decoration was predominantly used amber.Masterpiece consisted of amber panels, decorations and murals. In 1717,his son, king Friedrich Wilhelm I gave the Cabinet to Peter I as a gift. The amber room was packed and with great caution ferried to St. Petersburg in 1717.

In 1743 Empress Elizabeth commissioned master Alexander Martelli under the supervision of the chief architect F. B. Rastrelli to transform the Cabinet. And by 1770, under the supervision of Rastrelli’s the Cabinet is transformed into the famous Amber room of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, having grown substantially in size and luxury. It is still sometimes called the “eighth wonder of the world”.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War the German army stole the Amber room. From 1942 to spring 1944 it was put up for review in the Royal castle of Konigsberg. After the assault by Soviet troopsof Konigsberg in April 1945, the Amber room disappeared. Its further fate is still a mystery.

The Russian experts have worked on the reconstructionof the missing treasure since 1979. 

To the 300 anniversary of St. Petersburg in may 2003 it was restored in full from the Kaliningrad amber.

see more: http://rusinside.com/pushkin-tsarskoye-selo-catherine-palace/

To visit this palace you can take excursion from Saint-Petersburg.

If you want to visit this palace without excursion you can buy ticket online on the official web site: http://tkt.tzar.ru/en/

 source: http://rusinside.com/