Address: Russia, St. Petersburg, Pavlovsk
Building: 1782-1796 years
Architect: Charles Cameron
Coordinates: 59 ° 41'08.7 "N 30 ° 27'12.6" E
Federal cultural heritage site of Russia
Content:
Many sights of St. Petersburg are located outside the city. Picturesque Pavlovsk is one of such attractive places. People come here to see the works of famous architects Charles Cameron, Andrey Voronikhin and Vincenzo Brenna. Tourists are happy to walk in a spacious park, feed nimble squirrels, admire straight alleys, classical sculpture and smooth surface of ponds.
Bird's eye view of Pavlovsk Palace
History of Pavlovsk
The lands on which the city stands belonged to the Swedes and were transferred to Russia after the difficult Northern War. In 1777, the heir, Alexander, was born to the Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich. In honor of the significant event, the delighted Catherine II granted the future sovereign spacious lands with forests and serfs in the valley of the Slavyanka River. So from the south of the capital, the village of Pavlovskoe appeared. When Paul I became emperor, it received the status of a city.
In 1780, the famous connoisseur of ancient and Palladian architecture, Charles Cameron, began to arrange the future residence of the king. He began to build a palace on a small hill above the river. In 1784, the Italian architect Vincenzo Brenna got down to business and brilliantly decorated the halls on the 1st and 2nd floors.
View of the central building of the Pavlovsk Palace from the river. Slavyanka
After Paul I ascended the Russian throne, the city surrounded by forests began to act as an imperial residence. More people came here, so Brenna expanded the palace buildings, added side two-storey buildings and a church building from the southeast to the main building.
At the beginning of the 19th century, there was a strong fire, the raging flames destroyed several halls and galleries. The talented architect Andrey Voronikhin was entrusted to revive the lost. He brilliantly completed the palace, decorating it with living quarters for members of the imperial family.
Monument to Paul I against the background of the central building of the Pavlovsk Palace
Under the son of Paul I, Mikhail Pavlovich, the palace and park ensemble was preserved in its former form. An iron city was built into the city, and a Musical Station was built in the park. Then the residence was owned by the son of Nicholas I - Konstantin Nikolaevich. He set up a Museum of Antiquities in the building, opened a gallery of paintings and erected a monument to the Russian Tsar Paul I in front of the palace.
After the revolution, the royal property was nationalized, and the former residence of the imperial family was considered a museum. During the war years, all museum exhibits were evacuated to Udmurtia and Novosibirsk, so that valuable collections were not damaged in any way.
The situation with the park and palace buildings was much worse. During the Nazi occupation, more than 70 thousand trees were destroyed, bridges were blown up, pavilions were destroyed, and the picturesque landscapes in the Slavyanka valley were cut by the lines of trenches and trenches. Retreating, the Germans burned down the palace, and the old building was badly burned out in the fire.
Reconstruction work began immediately after the city was liberated. The restored rooms were opened one after the other from 1957 to 1977, so the historical collections returned to their places. At the same time, the park area was being restored. In the 1990s, the ancient palace and park ensemble was included by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Greek Hall of the Pavlovsk Palace
Palace collections
In 1781-1782, the future emperor Pavel Petrovich and his wife traveled to Europe. They visited the monarchs of different countries and bought the best paintings, elegant furniture, carpets, sculptures, china and glassware for their new palace near St. Petersburg. The art collections of Pavlovsk were replenished by other owners of the palace.
Today, the palace halls display a magnificent collection of paintings by masters of the Western European school. On the walls there are watercolors, miniatures and architectural drawings, as well as portraits and landscapes of Russian artists - O. A. Kiprensky, F. S. Rokotov, V. L. Borovikovsky and D. G. Levitsky. The interiors are decorated with marble sculptures and busts from Rome and Turin, exquisite Sèvres porcelain and gilded carved furniture made in the workshop of the famous French furniture maker Henri Jacob.
Throne Hall of the Pavlovsk Palace
Lovers of arts and crafts will be delighted with clocks, bronze fireplaces and lighting fixtures made in France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The palace halls display a lot of glass, porcelain and ornamental stones made in factories and stone-cutting workshops in tsarist Russia.
The pride of the palace is a rich collection of rare books, which includes 15 thousand volumes of rare editions, old photographs and manuscript archives. In some halls you can see fans, costumes and dresses of members of the royal family, embroidery and lace.
Cavalier Hall of the Pavlovsk Palace
The park
The spacious Pavlovsk park is considered a unique monument of landscape art of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. It is pleasant to walk here in any weather, but it is especially good in the park during the golden autumn.
Today the well-groomed corner of northern nature covers an area of 600 hectares and is divided into seven distinctive landscape zones. This is one of the largest landscape parks in Europe.
Temple of Friendship
Plantings and alleys were laid out on the site of forest lands, where they organized the royal hunt. The foundation of the English park was laid by the architect Charles Cameron. Under him, on the banks of the Slavyanka, the Big Wide Clearing, the Menagerie, the Big Star and the Palace District appeared. Architects and landscape designers who worked in Pavlovsk after Cameron tried to develop his ideas and preserve green spaces as much as possible.
View of the Cold Bath Pavilion from the Centaur Bridge
Pavlovsky Park is decorated with trees and shrubs, flower beds and mowed lawns. It has neat alleys, a regular French garden, ponds, intricate pavilions, Apollo's colonnade, the Mausoleum of Paul I, the Pil-Tower, picturesque bridges, marble and bronze sculptures.
Some parts of the park are like theater sets, while others resemble pristine thickets. On the outskirts of the forest, there are migration routes of wild boars and elk. A variety of birds live in the branches of trees and on ponds.
Colonnade of Apollo
Near the paths along which tourists walk, agile squirrels scurry about at any time of the year. They are not afraid of people and willingly accept food straight from their hands. In the park pavilions you can buy special food for squirrels. Nuts are also sold near the Pavlovsk railway station.
Useful information for visitors
The park is allowed on any day from 6:00 to 21:00. Free admission on weekdays. On weekends and on holidays from 10:00 to 17:00, entrance for adults costs 100 rubles, and for students from 7 to 18 years old and pensioners - 50 rubles. The pavilions are open to tourists only during the warm season.
Pavilion of the Three Graces
From mid-May to the end of September, on Saturdays and Sundays at 13:00, excursions around the park are organized for everyone. For a walk with a guide, you need to pay 300 rubles.
The palace complex is available for guests from 10:00 to 18:00. Ticket offices sell tickets until 16:30. The entrance to the ceremonial halls and living rooms for adults and students costs 500 rubles, and for students and people of retirement age - 200 rubles. Parents with 1-2 children are offered discounted family tickets for 1000-1200 rubles.
Pil-tower bridge against the background of the Pil-tower
For an additional fee of 150-200 rubles, you can see samples of Russian residential interiors of the 19th - early 20th centuries and living rooms that belonged to Empress Maria Feodorovna.Tourists like the expositions of the Museum of Costume, exhibitions where church utensils and vestments are presented, beautiful items of Russian porcelain and a photo exhibition about the history of Pavlovsk.
For the convenience of visitors, tickets are sold online on the official website of the museum-reserve. With electronic tickets, you can enter the territory of the palace and park ensemble through four entrances - the Nikolaev or Pig-iron gates, the Theater gates, the Church arch of the palace and the Marble gates, which are located opposite the railway station.
Round Hall ("Music Pavilion")
How to get there
By car, the reserve museum can be reached in 25-40 minutes. The Pavlovsk railway station is located near the western entrance to the park. Electric trains in this direction leave from the Vitebsk railway station. It is also convenient to get there from the Kupchino railway platform, which is connected by a passage to the metro station of the same name.
From metro stations "Zvezdnaya", "Kupchino" and "Moskovskaya" to the museum-reserve there are regular buses and fixed-route taxis. The journey takes 30-50 minutes.
