Sightseeing

ORANIENBAUM Lying just 12 kilometers to the west of Peterhof palace-and-park ensemble and 44 kilometers away from St Petersburg, the town of Lomonosov is situated on the southern bank of the Gulf of Finland opposite the fortress Kronshtadt and features a particular atmosphere of strict grandeur and refined charm. Originally called Oranienbaum (German for orange tree), Lomonosov was founded by Alexander Menshikov and was planned far more ambitious than Peterhof, but since Menshikov fell from grace in 1727, the grandiose plan bankrupted and the estate entered the state treasury. Oranienbaum is famous not only for its landscape parks dating back to the middle of the 19th century, but also for the splendid palace-museums: the Chinese Palace, the palace of Peter III, the Great (Menshikov’s) Palace, which nowadays are available to visit. The later, constructed in 1710-1727 to the design of architect J. Mario Fontana and Gotfrid Iohann Schedel in the classical baroque style, consists of the central part and lateral wings culminating in two remarkable pavilions (one of them - the Japanese Pavilion – is open to the public) and boasts a landscape garden with several terraces descending from the palace to the sea. From 173 to 1761 the Oranienbaum was the summer residence of the emperor Peter III, who built himself a miniature fortress with a small lake for his navy and a parade ground where he was fond of playing war games with soldiers. In the parks there were two artificial ponds called the Lower and the Red Ponds, and near the Lower pond Peter planed to built his palace. He commissioned Antonio Rinaldi to build him a modest palace on this site. The task was successfully fulfilled and in 1760 the Palace of Peter III, with the ground floor intended for the servants and not particularly adorned and the top floor decorated with lacquer paintings, refined carvings, modeling, composed parquet floors and featuring a rich collection of West European paintings of the 17-18 centuries was finished. Around the palace there are parterres and flower-beds of ornamental patterns and from the palace the Rowan-tree road runs amid amusing ponds, meadows and a small forest. The Rowan road leads to the central part of the Upper park where there are also the Chinese palace and the Sliding Hill, created by Rinaldi for Catherine the Great. The Chinese palace was constructed between 1762-1768 and it’s the only Palace in Russia built entirely in the Rococo style and famous for its fabulous interiors accomplished in the Chinese style. The Palace, which used to be called "a marvel full of marvels", was embellished with works of painting, sculpture and decorative and applied art: walls adorned with gilded moldings and covered with silk, the marvelous collection of canvases of artists from Venetian Academy, Russian and European porcelain, furniture and one of the richest collections of Chinese and Japanese applied art. In front of the southern facade there is a pond with a Chinese kitchen and a small green corridor Pergola on the shore and the English Alley with granite benches cut in the boulders, leading to the most unusual building in Oranienbaum - the Katalnaya gorka pavilion (the Sliding Hill pavilion). Oranienbaum with its palace and park ensemble, representing great historical and artistic value, turned out to be the only local palace to escape German occupation during World War II. Not besieged by the German troops, neither looted by the inimical invaders or destroyed, the estate was renamed Lomonosov in the idle of the 20th century after the famous physicist, but later it was reverted its original name and without restoration, nowadays it represents the original country residence of the 18 century.

Entry price