St. Petersburg Summer Palace Travel Guide

Scenic spot introduction:

The Summer Palace of St. Peter is the summer palace of Peter the Great and several generations of tsars. It has magnificent buildings, colorful fountains, and lush forests. It is known as the "Versailles of Russia". The Summer Palace is located in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, in a large forest adjacent to the Gulf of Finland. The palace is backed by hills and faces the Gulf of Finland. It covers a total area of 800 hectares. Grand Palace ,superior Lower Garden , Palais Marie The garden consists of the Pavilion of Curiosities, the Alexander Garden and the Cottage. There are numerous fountains and gilded statues on the wide lawns of the garden. In midsummer, the 150 fountains and more than 2,000 nozzles in the garden continuously spray water into the blue sky, forming waterfalls and various shapes. It is known as the "Capital of Fountains", "Kingdom of Fountains" and "Open-Air Museum".

Attractions distribution:

In the early 18th century, Peter the Great often had to visit the Kronstadt maritime fortress in the Gulf of Finland in order to compete with Sweden for the Baltic Sea outlet. In order to relieve his hard work of frequent sea voyages, his wife proposed to choose a suitable place in the bay to build a palace. After this suggestion was adopted, Peter the Great personally selected the Neva River and the outlet of the Gulf of Finland as the address of the summer palace. The earliest summer palace was designed by a Russian architect. At that time, there was only a garden and a few cabins, called Peter's Courtyard; later, Peter the Great specially invited French architects and artists to design it in the form of the Palace of Versailles, and personally sketched the layout of the gardens, pavilions, and fountains to participate in the construction project; thereafter, Catherine II and later Queen Anna also played a great role in the subsequent construction of Peter's Palace, making the scale of the summer palace larger and the architectural style more diverse. After the expansion in the following 150 years, Peter's Palace gradually developed into a huge scale that now includes 11 gardens, 30 palaces and attics, and a large number of fountains, sculptures and vases.
After the October Revolution, Peter Palace was nationalized by the Soviet regime and turned into a museum and garden. Grand Palace Open to all citizens. World War II brought catastrophic damage to Peter Palace, turning the entire palace into almost ruins; in early 1944, the Soviet regime approved a plan to rebuild Peter Palace. At that time, a large number of citizens came to Peter Palace every Sunday to participate in voluntary labor. After two and a half years of hard work, in the summer of 1946, the water column of the central cascade fountain of Peter Palace, which had been interrupted for five years, rushed into the blue sky again.

Scenic spot features:

fountains, cultural tours, Peter the Great, palaces, western architecture, royal gardens