Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chinese Blue Drawing Room
and
Choir Anteroom
, whose gold silk, woven
with swans and pheasants, is the original from the 18th century.
Once you finish your tour, you can head to the southern
Zubov Wing
(Zubovsky
korpus; adult/student R200/100;
10am-5pm Thu-Tue)
, which houses special exhibi-
tions.
THE MYSTERY OF THE AMBER ROOM
The original Amber Room was created from exquisitely engraved amber panels
given to Peter the Great by King Friederich Wilhelm I of Prussia in 1716.
Rastrelli later combined the panels with gilded woodcarvings, mirrors, agate and
jasper mosaics to decorate one of the rooms of the Catherine Palace. Plundered
by the Nazis during WWII, the room's decorative panels were last exhibited in
Königsberg's castle in 1941. Four years later, with the castle in ruins, the Amber
Room was presumed destroyed. Or was it?
In 2004, as Putin and then German Chancellor Gerhardt Schröder presided
over the opening of the new US$18 million Amber Room, restored largely with
German funds, rumours about the original panels continued to swirl. There are
those who believe that parts, if not all, of the original Amber Room remain hid-
February 2008 as attention focused on the possible contents of an artificial cav-
ern discovered near the village of Deutschneudorf on Germany's border with the
Czech Republic. Nothing conclusive has yet to be unearthed here, though, so
the mystery continues.
CATHERINE PARK
(
Екатерининский парк
; adult/student R100/50; 9am-6pm)
Around the Catherine
Palace extends the lovely Catherine Park. The main entrance is on Sadovaya ul, next
to the palace chapel. It extends around the ornamental Great Pond and contains an ar-
ray of interesting buildings, follies and pavilions.
PARK
ARK
