Suburban Parks and Palaces
St. Petersburg is surrounded by imperial residences, some of which are inscribed in the World Heritage list. These include: Peterhof, with the Grand Peterhof Palace and fountain cascades; Tsarskoe Selo, with the baroque Catherine Palace and the neoclassical Alexander Palace; and Pavlovsk Palace, which contains a domed palace of Emperor Paul (1782–1786) and a large English-style park.
Much of Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo had to be restored after being blown up by the retreating Germans in 1944. Other imperial residences have yet to be revived to their former glory. Gatchina, lying 45 km southwest of St Petersburg, retains a royal castle with 600 rooms surrounded by a park. Oranienbaum, founded by Prince Menshikov, features his spacious baroque residence and the richly decorated Chinese palace. Strelna has a hunting lodge of Peter the Great and the reconstructed Constantine Palace, used for official summits of the Russian president with foreign leaders.
Another notable suburb is Kronstadt, with its 19th-century fortifications and naval monuments. Catherinehof, originally intended as a garden suburb, was engulfed by the city in the 19th century.
Read more about this topic: Landmarks Of Saint Petersburg
Famous quotes containing the words suburban, parks and/or palaces:
“Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you’ve half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose and a teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you’re doing a hundred miles an hour in a suburban side street.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are born each morning, shelled upon
A sheet of light that paves
The palaces of sight, and brings again
The river shining through the field of graves.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)