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Tsarskoe Selo ("Tsar's Village"; also known as Pushkin), 17km southeast of St Petersburg, was Catherine the Great's favourite summer residence, and today it draws locals and tourists alike for its vast blue-and-white, imperial, Baroque palace, set in a richly landscaped park. The most convenient transport to the palace is provided by the minibuses which run from Moskovskiy prospekt outside Moskovskaya metro station every ten to twenty minutes and cost around 40 cents each way. Some go to Pushkin the town, several also run near the palace itself. Suburban trains run from Vitebsk Station (Vitebskiy vokzal) every fifteen to thirty minutes (there is a break between 10am and 11.45am); tickets are around 10 cents each way. Catherine the Great hated the Baroque style and when she came to power she immediately set to building and remodelling the main palace (daily except Tues 10am-5pm; $5) to her own taste. It was she who installed in 1775 the famous Amber Room , a gift from Frederick I of Prussia to Peter the Great. Stolen by the Germans during the war, the amber panels have fascinated several generations of scholars and amateurs, who have produced varied conflicting theories as to whether they were destroyed or are still buried in some unknown location. Meanwhile, the Amber Room is being re-created by modern craftsmen in time for St Petersburg's 300th anniversary in 2003. Perhaps the highlights of the palace are the rooms designed by Catherine's beloved Scottish architect, Charles Cameron: the charming Neoclassical interiors of her private apartments, the rich interiors of the Agate Rooms (designed as a bathhouse and summer pavilion) and the supreme elegance of the Cameron Gallery, its light airy structure projecting out from the palace over the park. The park itself is dotted in the English manner with follies and monuments: from the Turkish bath resembling an Ottoman mosque to the Pyramid where Catherine buried her favourite dogs and the newly restored Chinese village (now containing elite apartments for the rich).
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