Tsarskoye Selo, lying some 16 miles south of St Petersburg in the small town of Pushkin. The great blue, white and gold palace stands in parkland of some 1400 acres, which is divided into the Catherine Park and the Alexander Park. The palace itself was built on the site of a Finnish manor Saari-mois which Peter the Great had presented to his wife, Catherine, in 1710. On their deaths the entire property was left to their daughter, Tsarina Elizabeth Petrovna, who had spent a good deal of her childhood here.

The Catherine Park is a wonderful work of the Russian art of gardening from the 18th and 19th centuries.