Beside the Stream

Tsarskoye Selo, near Saint Petersburg, was the summer residence of the Tsars since 1717, when Catherine the Great hired a German architect to build a summer palace.  It takes an empire to fund a building like Catherine Palace.

It is exceedingly large, built with an endlessly long facade and two side arms that make a U that is entered through this gilded gate.

This is the view looking left from the gate, 

and this is the right side of the courtyard.   The building is so big that the front entrance is missed in both these photos.

Catherine Palace is not only very large, it is also highly detailed. 

During the reign of Catherine’s daughter Elizabeth (who owned more than 14,000 dresses when she died), the palace exterior was gilded with more than 100 kgs of gold. 

I thought this photo was interesting for two reasons: you have to love the PVC drainage system, and aren’t those men holding up the building sort of creepy?  According to Wikipedia, a support sculpted in the form of a man is an atlas (also known as a atlant, or atlantid; plural atlantes); The Roman term for such a sculptural support is telamon (plural telamones or telamons).

Peter the Great built Saint Petersburg by conscripting peasants from the length and breadth of the Russian Empire, and most of them died from cold, hunger, and disease.   According to Andrew Osborn of the UK’s Independent, “historians believe the remains of some 100,000 18th-century serfs are buried beneath its wide Parisian-style avenues and grand Italianate palaces. … They gave their lives for the glory of then Imperial Russia and what they created, St Petersburg, stands as a monument to the single-mindedness of the Russian state.”  Saint Petersburg and Catherine Palace were both built on the backs of serfs.

This lion’s face impressed me: look at his eyebrows, and his cowed expression.  God Bless and keep the Tsar, he says, far away from me.