A Saint Petersburg Palace and Park You Can Call Your Own

Posted on 09/04/2015

For fans of fixer-upper home shows, the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg has got to be the ultimate renovation challenge. Two hundred bedrooms give or take, with ornate plaster work and inlaid hardwood floors everywhere and plenty of lavish party space, not to mention the expansive grounds with lakes and follies.
Pity about the fire  those obnoxious Nazis set when they  left.

For visitors who haven’t seen them before, the must-do attractions on a visit to Saint Petersburg are the Big Three: the Summer Palace, Catherine the Great’s palace and the Winter Palace with its imperial Hermitage museum.

But having seem them before and coming to the city aboard a cruise on the Crystal Symphony, one of the unexpected tour options the ship offered was a remarkable palace I didn’t even think was open to the public. Unlike other attractions in the Russian capital of culture, you can visit Gatchina and think you have the place to yourself.