The State Museum-Reserve "Gatchina"
Neoclassical imperial palace built as a hunting lodge, with a lakeside grotto reached by an underground stone passage.
Location
About this audio guide
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.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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