Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
296
palace's extravagant balls. Outside the grounds are a few restaurants playing up the town's
imperial heritage for the benefit of rich Russian and foreign tourists, with servers in
period costume and ornate dining halls. One of these is
Ofitserskoye Sobraniye
(25
Ulitsa Konstantinovskaya;
&
812/427-4903
), housed in a former club for pre-revolu-
tionary royal officers. Its extensive appetizer selection is more successful than the main
courses.
2
TSARSKOYE TSELO
PUSHKIN
25km (16 miles) S of St. Petersburg
For an intimate view of imperial country living during St. Petersburg's rise to world
prominence, visit the baroque Catherine's Palace at Tsarskoye Tselo (formerly called
Pushkin). This is almost always viewed together with a trip to nearby Pavlovsk to see Czar
Paul I's classical castle and sculpted gardens (see the next section). It was here that Rus-
sian engineers laid the country's first railway line, connecting these two royal resort
towns, in order to shuttle nobles between palaces for summertime balls. Today anyone
can ride the train, a 5-minute, 20-ruble ride, and view a model of the original train that
took Czar Nicholas I and his family on their first ride. The world-famous
Amber
Room
—gutted by the Nazis and recently meticulously reconstructed—is the major draw
at Catherine's Palace; the rest of its rooms are marginally less impressive.
ESSENTIALS
Tsarskoye Tselo and Pavlovsk each can be visited on its own, but their proximity to each
other and convenient transport between them make for a pleasant dual-destination trip.
Nearly all organized tours combine the two. You could fit both into 1 day, extend the trip
over a weekend, or visit each separately. If you're visiting both, it makes most sense to hit
Tsarskoye Tselo in the morning, then head to Pavlovsk for a picnic lunch in the park
before visiting the palace there.
Many St. Petersburg hotels offer tours, as do
Davranov Travel
(17 Italianskaya Ulitsa;
&
812/571-8694;
www.davranovtravel.ru) and
Frigate Tours
(
&
812/331-3333;
www.frigate-tour.com). You can also get a riverboat to Tsarskoye Tselo from the pier in
front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg during the warmer months. Getting there on
your own is not too difficult, but getting around once you're there requires a great deal
of walking. A good tour guide or detailed book about the palaces (available at bookstores
in St. Petersburg; see “Books” in chapter 15) is recommended. Organized tours usually
take you by bus to Tsarskoye Tselo first, then to Pavlovsk.
If you're on your own, Russian tour buses run direct to Tsarskoye Tselo from in front
of Nevsky Prospekt metro station; the trip takes about 40 minutes and costs about 500
rubles round-trip. You can also take a suburban train
(elektrichka),
which leaves Vitebsk
station in St. Petersburg for Tsarskoye Tselo, then continues on to Pavlovsk. The ride
costs about 200 rubles and takes about 45 minutes, then another 5 minutes to Pavlovsk,
but you must be able to read the names of both towns in Russian to make sure you don't
miss your stop (see chapter 19 for Cyrillic alphabet guide). The train station at Tsarskoye
Tselo is a sight in itself, with its Art Nouveau sweep and murals showing stations along
the route, as well as the Royal Waiting Room upstairs. The walk to the palace takes a
good 15 minutes, or you can hire a taxi.
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