Pavlovsk Palace and Park Ensemble

Pavlovsk was presented to Paul I by his mother Catherine the Great on the birthday of his first son, the future Emperor Alexander I. The place lies to the south-east of Tsarskoye Selo and originally its dense forests were used for court hunting. But later the picturesque landscape inspired Paul I to set up an imperial summer residence here.

The construction of the palace and park ensemble was entrusted to Charles Cameron in 1777 and completed in the late 1820ths. Its centrepiece is the Pavlovsky Palace built in 1782-1786 by Cameron. But after Catherine II died her son Paul I ordered Vincenzo Brenna to redesign the palace into a more parade residence. In 1796 the Palace was enlarged with the second story and two more wings. With the latest touch made by the architect Shtakhenshnaider in 1843-44 the Pavlovsky Palace achieved the imposing classical appearance it has in our days.

The interiors of the Palace are fabulous. Apart from Brenna and Cameron, many other celebrated architects, such as Quarenghi, Voronikhin and Rossi, contributed to its magnificence. The private rooms have now their original interior and all the furniture and the Emperor’s and his wife’s belongings remain untouched. The Pavlovsky Palace rooms are full of pieces of art which make up a fine collection of paintings, furniture, sculptures, bronze articles and china sets. The artworks were bought by the Emperor and his wife themselves when travelling to Europe.

The area around the Palace was developed into vast parks crossed length and breath by deliberately planned alleys decorated with more then a hundred of marble allegoric sculptures. The two symmetrical bases at the both sides of the river Slavianka – the Great Star and the Circle of White Birches – are the centres of many dispersing alleys with rows of shaped trees. To the south-west of the Pavlovsky Palace the Private Garden lies. In 1800-1803 the splendid pavilion the Tree Graces was established here by Cameron.

In 1782-83Cameron erected the famous Apollo Colonnade on the left coast of the river. Initially the pavilion was a round twine Doric colonnade with the Apollo Belvedere statue, a copy of the famous antique sculpture in the Belvedere Palace of Vatican, in the centre. But in 1817 its basement was undermined considerably and a part of the colonnade crashed. The architects decided against restoring the destroyed part. Instead, they dismantled it in the picturesque disorder that made the whole construction resemble antique ruins.

In a small peninsula of one of the numerous bends of the Slavianka River rests the Friendship Cathedral built by Cameron in 1780-82. It was dedicated to Catherine the Great and the countenance of the Minerva sculpture in one of its bays bears strong resemblance with the Empress’s features.

When Paul I was assassinated his wife Maria settled in Pavlovsk once and for all. Every spot of the place reminded her of her husband. In memory of her beloved spouse Maria ordered a mausoleum. The project was fulfilled in 1810 by Tomas de Tomon. Actually, it was her husband who, unable to forgive his mother Catherine II for killing his father Peter III and circumventing him on the throne, had issued the new order of succession depriving female part of imperial family of any challenges to the throne. However, during her 25-year long marriage she gave birth to ten children and up to the fall of the monarchy all the Russians Emperors were her descendants. After her death in 1825 the whole ensemble had not changed almost at all and today even the shaped plants and flowerbeds in the marvellous regular parks are kept in full order.