The State Museum-Reserve "Gatchina"

This guide to Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg follows two owners: Count Grigory Orlov, who received the estate from Catherine the Great in 1765 as thanks for helping put her on the throne, and spent fifteen years building a palace here before dying soon after it was finished, and Catherine's son, the future Paul the First, who turned the estate into a stage for military ritual and daily Prussian-style drills. It traces how Paul's search for control there met a violent end of his own. Listen near the underground passage running down toward the lake.