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Tsarskoe Selo State Museum and Heritage Site
Pushkin, 7 Sadovaya st.
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The palace-and-park ensemble of Tsarskoe Selo is a superb monument of world-ranking architecture and garden-and-park design dating from the 18th to early 20th centuries. The world-famous Amber Room is located here.
A whole constellation of outstanding architects, sculptors and painters made the ideas of their crowned clients a reality here. Tsarskoe Selo is a cluster of very fine examples of Baroque and Classical architecture and it was also the first place in the Russian capital where interiors decorated in the Moderne (Art Nouveau) style appeared.
Tsarskoe Selo first became an imperial residence in the early 18th century as an estate of the Empress-consort Catherine (later Empress-regnant as Catherine I), who received it as a gift from Peter I; June 24, 1710 is considered to be the founding date of Tsarskoe Selo.
The periods of the greatest prosperity of the residence are considered to be the reigns of Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II. It was in the 18th century that the Catherine Palace acquired its final appearance.
World War II caused enormous damage to palaces, parks, and museum collections. Occupying a special place among revived monuments, the war-devastated, burnt and ruined Catherine Palace has been undergoing major restoration since 1957, which is twelve years later than the other suburban palace-and-park ensembles. Because of the delay, only slightly more than a half of its 57 halls have now been reopened.
In 2014, the first museum in Russia dedicated to World War I, “Russia in the Great War”, was opened in the museum-reserve.
In 2016, the main pavilion of the Alexander Park, Arsenal, was opened after restoration. The exposition “Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal. The Imperial Collection of Weapons”, created in collaboration with the State Hermitage Museum, is located here.
In 2018, the most romantic pavilion in the Alexander Park, the Chapelle, was opened after restoration.
In 2019, the restoration of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in the Catherine Palace, an architectural masterpiece of the 18th century designed by F.B. Rastrelli, was completed. In the same year, the Lyons Hall regained its former splendor. 74 years after the end of the Great Patriotic War, the entire ceremonial enfilade of the Catherine Palace was returned to the exposition.
