Half-Day Tour to Pushkin and Catherine's Palace from St. Petersburg

The palace you will see on this tour was designed by the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the creator of the Winter Palace and Smolny Cathedral. Most of the restored interiors date back to the time of Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, though there are some early 19th century interiors too. Catherine the Great chose to live in a separate wing of the palace, and even at the age of 60 she quite happily walked the length of the palace to reach the building's private church every day.

If any proof is needed for the extravagance of Russia's Imperial rulers, then it can be found in the fact that, in less than two centuries, the Romanov Tsars established this suburban estate named Tsarskoe Selo (Tsar village) - that, in terms of grandeur and excess, outstrip even famous French Palaces and gorgeous Italian Villas. The resultant palace, completed in 1756, is nearly 1km in circumference, with elaborately decorated blue-and-white facades featuring gilded atlantes, caryatids and pilasters. It took over 100kg of gold to decorate the palace exteriors.

The interiors of the Catherine Palace are no less spectacular. The so- called Golden Enfilade of staterooms, designed by Rastrelli, is particularly renowned and forms the focus of the palace tour. The Amber Room in the Palace was a complete chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. Due to its singular beauty, it was sometimes dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World".