Pavlovsk Palace and Park

Pavlovsk was given to Paul I as grand duke in 1777 and built by Charles Cameron in a restrained classical manner - a domed central block with curving colonnades, plainer than Peterhof or Tsarskoye Selo and generally regarded as the most refined of the imperial suburban palaces. Around it is a landscape park of about six hundred hectares laid out over decades in the English manner, with the Slavyanka valley, temples, bridges, the Rose Pavilion and the Great Circles, which is among the largest landscape parks in Europe. The war left it a burnt shell with the park mined and most of its trees cut. The restoration that followed is the notable part: it was led by Anna Zelenova, the museum's director, who had helped evacuate the collection in 1941 and returned to run a rebuilding carried out largely by women, working from measured drawings and photographs, and Pavlovsk reopened progressively from 1957 - the first of the palaces to come back.

What you actually see

• The Cameron palace - restrained classicism, a domed block with curving colonnades.
• The park - six hundred hectares of English landscape along the Slavyanka valley.
• The restoration - a burnt shell rebuilt from 1944, led by Anna Zelenova.
• The evacuated collection - objects saved in 1941 and returned to the rebuilt rooms.

When to go

May to October for the park, which is the larger part of the visit; autumn colour is exceptional. Half a day to a day.

Honest expectations

The park is very large and takes hours to walk. Palace interiors are post-war restoration, though a substantial part of the collection is original and evacuated. Separate tickets for park and palace. Winter closes much of the park's interest.

Nearby

Tsarskoye Selo and the Catherine Palace are a few kilometres north.