Catherine Palace

Rastrelli rebuilt the palace for Elizabeth between 1752 and 1756 as a three-hundred-metre front in blue, white and gold, with an enfilade of state rooms running its length. The famous room is the Amber Room: panels of amber mosaic backed with gold leaf and mirrors, given to Peter I by Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia in 1716 and installed here, expanded over decades into a chamber that was called a wonder of the world. In 1941 the Germans dismantled and removed it to Königsberg; it was last recorded there in 1944 and has never been found, with theories running from destruction in the 1945 bombardment to concealment. What visitors see is a full recreation, made in St Petersburg between 1979 and 2003 using Baltic amber and archive photographs. The rest of the palace was gutted in the war and has been restored room by room over seventy years, with work still going on.

What you actually see

• The Amber Room - a recreation completed in 2003; the original disappeared in 1945.
• The Rastrelli front - three hundred metres of blue, white and gold baroque.
• The enfilade - state rooms running the length of the building.
• The restoration - a palace gutted in the war and rebuilt over seventy years.

When to go

May to September for the park; the palace is open year-round. Half a day. Timed tickets and long queues in season - book ahead.

Honest expectations

The Amber Room is a modern recreation, not the original, which remains missing. Photography inside the Amber Room is prohibited. Queues in summer are severe and independent visitors are admitted after groups. Most interiors are post-war reconstruction.

Nearby

Pavlovsk is a few kilometres south; St Petersburg is north.