Lying 22 km south of St. Petersburg, the town of Pushkin is one of St.Petersburg’s most famous suburbs. Formerly (from 1728 to 1918) known as Tsarskoye selo (translates from Russian as "village of the tsars"), it grew up around one of the main summer residences of the Russian royal family and is noted for the magnificent Catherine’s Palace and surrounding parks.
Originally commissioned (1717-1723) by Catherine I, Peter the Great’s wife, the palace was later enlarged (1743-48) and rebuilt (1752-57) in the Russian Baroque style by Bartolomeo Rastrelli. The palace and its park, also laid out by Rastrelli, were considerably embellished under Catherine the Great (ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796) by the Scottish architect Charles Cameron.
Deliberately gutted by Germans during World War II (Pushkin was occupied by Germans from 1941 to 1944), the palace, with its world’s famous Amber Room (stolen by Germans during the war the original room is seemingly lost for ever), is an impressive post-WW II reconstruction.
The adjoining Cameron Gallery has a magnificent view of the Catherine Park, and the lake with memorial Column in the centre of it (the column was erected in memory of Russia’s victory over Turkey in the war of 1783).
Right behind the Catherine palace is the Alexander Park with the smaller Alexander Palace, the Nicolas II’s favourite summer palace. It was in the Alexander Palace that in 1917 Nicolas II and his family were kept under arrest by Kerensky government (the royal family was later relocated to the Urals and shot down by Bolsheviks). Both Catherine and Alexander Parks are popular places for airing with residents of St.Petersburg. Immediately adjacent to the main palace is the Lyceum, now converted to a museum in honour of the greatest Russian poet Aleksander Pushkin, who studied at the Lyceum from 1811 to 1817 and for whom the city was renamed in 1937 (at the 100th anniversary of his death).

Open: 10:00 – 17:00

Closed on Tuesdays and on the last Monday of every month.

Address: 7, Sadovaya street, Pushkin.
(It can be reached by local trains from Vitebsky Rail Station, or minibuses # 287, 387 from the metro station Moskovskaya.

Phone: +7 (812) 465 20 24

www.tzar.ru