Private Tour to Gatchina Palace of Paul

 The town of Gatchina was given by Catherine the Great to Count Orlov and it’s evident from the residence he built there that his taste in castles was more sedate than that of Catherine and the rest of the Imperial Family. Square and pale like Buckingham Palace, the refined, quiet looking palace was laid out over English style parks adding to the sobriety. It still had 600 delicately stuccoed rooms, Italian style parquetry, painted ceilings and a zoo, but the tone was softer than the magnificence seen in other Russian palaces of the age. Catherine liked Orlov’s work and after his death brought the palace for her son Paul to live in, who’s extensive travels gave the palace and Gatchina a cosmopolitan flavour. Paul eventually did the palace over in the Russian neo-classical style, adding garnishes and opulence to the more severe rooms and to the park and it passed down the Imperial family receiving minor alterations and adjustments of style and atmosphere with each new owner. Like many of Russia’s great Imperial Palaces it was opened as a museum after the Revolution in 1917. St Petersburg has sprawled to meet Gatchina and it is now a suburb rather than a separate town (with the highest quality of life in Russia) as it was in 1900. Restoration work is still being done of the palace but some of the state rooms have been re-opened to the public.

Additional info: this tour must be booked at least 3 days in advance of travel (except days off and public holidays in Russia). This tour is operated in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Polish.

If you make an order less than 3 days prior to the excursion the cost is to be increased by 30 %

 The palace and park complex of Gatchina is an outstanding example of eighteenth-century landscape architecture. The Palace of Paul I, which was converted into a museum in 1918, was famous for its exquisite interior decoration, as exemplified by the White Hall, the Marble Dining Room, the Crimson Drawing Room, the Grecian and Arms Galleries, and for the wealth of its collections of painting, sculpture, and decorative and applied art.

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