Catherine Palace and Amber Room
A narrated drive of St, Petersburg city highlights includes a visit to Tsarskoye Selo for a tour of the Catherine Palace.
WHAT YOU VISIT
Catherine Palace - Designed by Rastrelli, the ornate Baroque Palace is over 1,000 feet long and features an ornate blue facade. Gold onion domes crown the palace's north end, the site of the chapel. A gallery of Greek and Roman heroic busts decorates a covered walkway designed for Catherine the Great. Surrounding the palace are 1,400 acres of manicured gardens and parkland. Your tour visits the Grand Hall, the Amber Room, the Portrait Hall, the Crimson Pilaster Room.
The Amber Room is one of the most requested views by visitors. After many years of rebuilding, restoration and replacing the missing panels of this spectacular display of craftsmenship and artistry, an entire room made of finely carved and polished Amber. The original panels were stolen during the german occupation of the palace estate in World War II and using a few original panels and drawings of the original room, the painstaking process of recreating the missing panels became one of the most complex and difficult restoration project ever undertaken by recreating the original techniques for working amber which were long ago lost to history. After the beginning in 1979, the amber creation was finished in 2003..
WHAT YOU SEE ALONG THE WAY
Board your motorcoach for a narrated drive south of St. Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo along Moskovsky prospect - one of the city's largest streets that from the early 18th century was part of the main road which connected St. Petersburg to Moscow and Tsarskoye Selo, the summer residence of the tsars. Pass Stalin-era buildings, modern residential apartments and industrial enterprises. The town of Tsarskoye Selo (Russian for Tsar's Village) is a lovely little village built as a support center for the Tsar's palaces in the main estate. This were the large staff and attendants of the summer court lived
