23 - 25 July: Palaces Galore – St Petersburg Episode 3

We still had another few days in St Petersburg and set off to explore beyond the city centre. Firstly we took ourselves out to Tsarskoe Selo, also called the Catherine Palace, which is about 16 miles south of St Petersburg.  For this we had no guide, just took the metro and a local train and bus – which was an adventure in itself!  Once you get outside the main tourist areas, people do not speak so much English. Hence I learned another word of Russian as well as ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you’ – the word for ‘station’ is вокзал, pronounced ‘vagzal’ – apparently after the London station ‘Vauxhall’!

The St Petersburg metro is amazing, a tourist attraction in itself! Opened in 1955, some of its stations, especially the early ones, are stunning, and were intended by Stalin to be ‘palaces for the people’. The walls of the stations are lined with marble, granite and limestone, and the mosaics, columns, chandeliers and sculptures were commissioned from important artists to decorate the metro.

Here is the mosaic at Admiralteyskaya at the top of the escalator …

The escalators are incredibly long, maybe 200 metres, and go down really deep – you can’t see the bottom when you get on at the top!

Here’s the rather fancy ticket office at Avtovo …

All the platforms are wide and spacious …

This is one of the famous moulded glass columns and chandeliers at Avtovo station …

Here is the statue of the poet and author Pushkin at Pushkinskaya station …

… and a few stops further along at Narvskaya are more statues and carvings, but this time of Soviet era images, such as ordinary workers and the hammer and sickle motif …

Here’s a colourful naval-themed mosaic at Admiralteyskaya – and this whole trip all for 28 roubles (about 50p) …

After all that, boarding the local train to Detskoe Selo to go out to the Catherine Palace was a bit of a comedown, with its wooden seats and lack of decorative features!  The trip took about 45 minutes and we then had to negotiate a bus without speaking the lingo! But we got there and it was worth it!

As we were not on a guided tour we had to queue to get into the Palace itself, but it was an opportunity to observe the renovation work going on – you can see how the restored colours on the left-hand side of the picture are stronger …

This is the back door of Tsarskoe Selo – it was designed by the architect Rastrelli for Tsarina Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, and she named it the Catherine Palace in honour of her mother Catherine I …

Inside is another astonishing Baroque palace, but with some Neo-Classical interiors which were later redesigned to Catherine the Great’s taste. Surrounding it is a huge landscaped park. Here are some of the luxurious rooms of Tsarskoe Selo …

The Cavaliers’ Dining Room …

The massive Great Hall with two grand pianos and a vast ceiling painting, 'The Triumph of Russia' (1755) by Giuseppe Valeriani …

… another Baroque Dining Room …

Catherine the Great, and two of the many beautiful tiled furnaces which heated the palace …

This room had ‘old masters’ as the wallpaper …

This is part of the famous Amber Room, in which the walls are all lined with mosaics made with different colours of semi-precious amber stones …

This room has got it all – gilding, tiling, painted ceiling, mosaic floor and elaborate patterned wallpaper!

This is the Green Dining Room designed by a Scottish architect, Charles Cameron.  He was commissioned by Catherine the Great to redecorate some of the rooms in a restrained Neo-Classical style more to her taste than Rastrelli’s flamboyant Baroque décor …

Here’s another of the Neo-Classical rooms …

There was also the huge park to explore, which was created from dense forest by thousands of soldiers and labourers.  We went down the beautifully curved staircase …

… to admire the flower beds …

… the lake, which has several pavilions around it including the Turkish Bath …

… and the formal gardens.

This is the Hermitage, a blue and white Baroque pavilion used to entertain small groups of guests for dinner!

This is the amazing 300 metre (980 ft) long Baroque façade of Tsarskoe Selo …

… and some of the detailed giltwork on the Royal Chapel …

What a day! But back to reality – we took the train back to the centre of St Petersburg …

The wooden seats were surprisingly comfortable – at least for the relatively short journey to Vitebsky station!

The next day we took the hydrofoil across the Gulf of Finland – a 30 minute trip at 65km per hour …

… to Peterhof, built by Peter the Great to celebrate victory over Sweden in 1709, and inspired by his visit to Versailles. We arrived just in time to see the fountains turned on for the day to a musical fanfare …

The Grand Cascade has 64 fountains, 142 water jets and 37 gilded bronze statues descending from the Great Palace to the sea!

This was the only occasion we went on a guided tour. We joined people from two other boats in Krestovsky Marina – Anna and Bengt from Sweden and Noel and Graham from New Zealand. Here we all are with our guide, Olga, in the middle …

Olga gave us a fascinating tour around the Great Palace itself, but you are not allowed to take any photographs inside …

This was followed by a tour of the magnificent landscaped park, with both English and French gardens …

The fountain in this garden is called the Roman Fountain and is inspired by one in St Peters Square in Rome …

There are many other fountains and cascades throughout the park …

This is the Adam Fountain and there is a matching one of Eve …

Children get the chance to dress up in the costume of Peter the Great’s time …

Later, after a delicious and very Russian meal of Cold Borscht and Beef Stroganov, some of us went to the ballet – Swan Lake – at the Hermitage Theatre. Situated within the Winter Palace, it’s the oldest theatre in St Petersburg (opened in 1785) and they still retain the traditional principles of classical Russian ballet and choreography.

So the ballet nowadays is much as it would have been when Catherine the Great attended performances here. It’s a beautiful venue and it was an excellent performance, but a very hot night and no air conditioning – just what Catherine would have had to put up with in the 18^th Century!

We visited just one more ‘little’ palace – set in beautiful parkland on an island which was within easy walking distance of the marina …

Yelagin Palace is a much more manageable size than the others we’ve visited – only about 10 rooms are open to the public. It’s also a less ornate Neo-Classical design, but is still a magnificent building …

Yelagin Palace was named after a court official who built a palace here at the end of the 18^th century. The island was bought and the palace rebuilt by Alexander I in 1817 for his mother. Again there are fabulous ceiling decorations and some gilding, but not quite as ornate as the Baroque extravaganzas we’ve seen …

The rooms are beautifully decorated but not as enormous and showy as the other palaces …

There’s still a wealth of detail – the doors are veneered with stained maple and decorated with gilded bronze roses, wreaths of forget-me-nots and stars …

… and this is a close up of some of the plasterwork …

The beautifully laid, patterned wooden floors are also impressive …

The ceiling of the Oval Hall is decorated with statues and trompe l’oeils …

And finally we rather liked this sculpture and couldn’t resist joining in!

That's the end of our time in St Petersburg – the return journey begins tomorrow!