Catherine's Palace in St Petersburg, Russia

Catherine's Palace - Onion Shaped Domes of the Orthodox Chapel
There are always five domes, representing Christ and his four Evangelists
The shape is based not on onions, but on idolized burning candle flames - giving light to the world

The Gates say 'E' as Empress Elizabeth refurbished the Palace in later years and put her mark on it and the surrounding parks

Repainted without gold leaf on stone in sky blue and ochre. Statues which where gilded shed their gold coat after every winter, as the gold did not stick to stone..so now its just paint

St Petersburg presents a challenge when trying to write about it or even show some of the many impressions in photos. Built by Peter the Great after he was inspired by the island cities of Amsterdam and Venice, it has evolved from a small settlement (albeit replete with palaces) to a multimillion inhabitant’s city. Photos about modern St Petersburg I leave to last. One must say, though, that all the Tsars starting with Peter the Great and ending with Nicholas II, have contributed to the splendour of historic St Petersburg. Tsarist St Petersburg’s treasures are the reason why thousands and thousands of visitors flock here ever year, despite restrictive visa rules, paralysing traffic and mostly lousy weather.

Visa rules: visitors without a personal Russian visa are only allowed ashore as part of an organized licensed group excursion. No private roaming around, not even into the cruise terminal building. To apply and receive a Russian visa takes a lot of ‘dedication and patience’, tolerance for bureaucracy, time and lots of money. Ergo most visitors opt for the tour alternative.

Catherine’s Palace, or Tsarskoye Selo, is the first stop.  Built about 25 miles outside the city, on the shores of the Gulf of Finland and in the town of Pushkin, is was the summer home for Peter the Great and his second wife Catherine.

Previously gilded and now painted column support. There are hundreds of these, and they symbolise the serfdom of Tsarist Russia: bent neck, carrying the empire, obedient put pointing upward towards their autocratic ruler, the Tsar.

Present day welcome, a small brass band playing Kalinka over and over again - for donations from the waiting crowd

Peter is one of the House of Romanov, noble Boyars of Moscow who came to power through various intriguing means around 1613. Peter lived from 1682 to 1725, when he died of a combination of lifelong carousing, failing kidneys and a lingering venereal disease.

Statue of Peter the Great - he was over six feet tall....

 His first wife Yevdokia was encouraged to retreat to a monastery, after bearing him a son Alexei, to make room for Martha Skavronskaya, a Livonian peasant’s daughter. Echoes of Henry VIII’s divorce without the beheadings! Martha took the Orthodox name of Catherine and bore him ten children of whom only Anna and Elizabeth survived.

His second wife - Catherina

Nevertheless, Catherine’s life mirrors the one of Cinderella – true rags to super riches story. She actually was a surviving war widow and serving woman, Pastor Gluck`s cook actually, who narrowly escaped being raped and murdered by a plundering mob of Tsarist soldiers, who were incited to these misdeeds by  the erroneous blowing up of a powder magazine. The soldiers who captured her sold their price – future Catherine – to the victorious General Sheremetev, whom she served as bed mate and laundress. Then our friend Menshikov, Peter`s right hand man, took a fancy to her. Finally Peter the Great fell for her charms (she was lively and jolly, but not good looking) and the rest is history…She was obviously neither born nor educated to rule, handed the reins of power to Menshikow and other high officials, while she squandered her time on amusements, outings and feasts. She died before she was 44 years old after only two years on the throne.

Peter was an exacting reformer. After various apprenticeships in Amsterdam, one of them for carpentry and ship building, he returned to Russia to propel it into his ‘modern age’. That involved mass executions of old fashioned boyars, banishing of his first wife to a monastery and taking up with Anna Mons as a stop-gap lover, and separating his son Alexei from the Tsarina’s influence. He forbid beards on men (unless they paid a beard tax) and got rid of traditional boyar outfits to replace them with modern fashions. He got out of the hated Kremlin in Moscow and set about creating an access to the Baltic sea by building St Petersburg (named after the Apostle) by hook or by crook, meaning thousands of forced labour workers died in the process from disease, cold or exhaustion.  He built no bridges in St Petersburg, as he insisted that the inhabitants should commute by boat. They all received free boats to do that.

Despite his progressive innovations in education, administration, science and creating a Russian naval fleet, winning many battles both diplomatic and by force, intrigue of course was rampant at court. Peter’s son Alexei was under suspicion of treason allegedly instigated by his mother, and he paid for this accusation by either being killed by Peter himself or by hired assassins.

Peter`s wife Catherine deceived him with one of his courtiers, Willem Mons, who was executed when found out for what was euphemistically called ‘abuse of office’. In a rage, Peter tore up his will in which he designated Catherine as his successor, but died before he could write a new one. So Catherine was next in line.

Menshikov was one of his closest friends, and somewhat prone to corruption and intrigue. He built himself a palace, which at the time was larger than Peter’s. Peter retaliated by ordering Menshikov to donate his palace for official functions and pay for all ensuing entertaining and catering. Menshikov had no choice but to obey of course. Peter the Great knew of Menshikov’s corruption but maintained that he ‘preferred a corrupt genius to an honest idiot’ working for him, as Menshikov was a talented ‘politician’.

So not exactly a nice guy, but a decisive force in Russia’s evolution, he left behind a whole collection of palaces and ‘cottages’ in and around St Petersburg.

Gold and Mirrors,  Parquet floors and painted Ceilings...

Tall windows and more gold

The Buffet Room where everything including decorations, furnishings, porcelain, crystal and cutlery is co-ordinated to the last detail

Catherine’s Palace is one of the largest, and most famous for its Amber Room and the Great Hall with gilded everything, giant crystal chandeliers and walls covered in mirrors where not covered in gold leaf. There is a ‘picture wall’ room, where dozens of pieces of priceless art were ‘cut to size’ by order of the Empress (by that time Elizabeth) to fill walls seamlessly with paintings as was the trend at that time. So if a painting did not fit the assigned space – out came the scissors. 

Cut to size...paintings in the 'museum room'

One grand staircase is painted pure white, so as to show off the colouring of the huge collection of Peter’s Chinese vases. 

One example of Peter's Vase Collection

There are Delft heating stoves several meter high (the palace must have been freezing in subarctic winter) where Peter deployed Dutch techniques adopted by Russian craftsmen to copy the Delft look. 

Delft Style Stove Tiles - Detail

Heating Stove in Delft Style - more than one in the larger rooms

Quirky, opulent, laden with gold, obscenely gaudy, nouveau rich on a grand scale, baroque to end all baroque, those are the prevailing motives in Catherine’s Palace. Granted succeeding Tsarinas and Empresses did their own remodelling, which increased the overall glamour of the palace.

Miriads of Wall Decorations in all rooms, here a tiny detail

Frescoes cover most ceilings...

Mirrors make the rooms seem endless

Barcelona has Gaudi, St Petersburg has Gaudy

Small detail on square meters of carved and gilded wood on an entry door

The Palace was remodeled, re-gilded, appropriated by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution and much later destroyed in WWII, after fortunately much of the treasure was hauled away to safety. Many of the famous rooms as well as the exterior and the gardens have been painstakingly restored by now, and those efforts continue at a steady slow pace and exorbitant expense. 

After WWII - the Palace lay in ruins

Restored today, thousands of people visit here every day, especially during cruise ship visits. Sometimes there are 5-7 floating monsters simultaneously in the harbour. Depending on size that could translate into 2500 or more visitors a day

Hundreds of millions of rubles went into reconstructing the Amber Room alone, of which the originals amber panels are still ‘lost’ somewhere after having been stolen by German invaders. So there is a treasure out there – somewhere…about 152 Million Dollars’ worth! That's how muchit was worth, when the Tsars constructed it - now it may just be a little more than that.

Segment of the Amber Room - all covered in the semiprecious stone found along the shores of the Baltic

It is incredible that all this is made of solidified pine resins....

To get into the palace, one lines up for almost hours subjected to prevailing climatic conditions. There is one toilet room for each male and female. No coats allowed, hence cloakrooms where elbows come in handy when retrieving coats. No big bags, no photos in the Amber Room. Babushkas (?) female guards at every door who keep the mob in line. No touching of anything – or one heads for Siberia for sure. Booties on every foot to protect the parquet floors. One is herded in compact groups through the series of rooms which are open to the public to emerge back out into a chill wet St Petersburg day.

One of the living rooms of the last doomed Tsars. Nicholas and Alexandra, who were shot in a cellar after the Russian Revolution. spent a lot of their time here. Ironically is happened in Ekaterinburg, Catherine's Castle, in the Urals.

A sad reminder of their tragic life and death...their son's Alexis toy horse...Alexis was homophiliac, he too died with his parents, together with his four sisters, their pet dog, a maid and a doctor, when they were all assassinated brutally in Ekaterinburg

The famous photo of Nicholas with his son Alexis. Alexis was carried a lot instead of allowing him to walk...a fall may have proven fatal giving his condition as a 'bleeder'. He inherited his disease from his mother, who carried it in her blood as a descendant of Queen Victoria, who also carried the gene

The Russian Tsars knew their horses. Equestrian portraits show them mounted on magnificent specimens

Some Tsars kept life simple, here the campain cot, chair and sword of one of them, who never slept in the imperial bed chambers, but preffered this spartan set up

A few Tsarinas went for the Wedgewood Look

Souvenir stands await their customers eagerly, that is the same in Russia as anywhere else. We ‘lost’ one of our group participants and did not realize it until about 2 hours later when we were already in a Russian shopping mall, the designated ‘buy your own lunch’ locale. Our bus had to return through traffic et al, and the guide, a very well educated Russian woman speaking perfect English, combed the grounds of Catherine’s Palace and souvenir stands to find the lost sheep amongst flocks of tourists. Miraculously, she found him none the worse for wear and rain and we were off again to an afternoon at St Isaak’s Cathedral. To be continued