Visit the Catherine Palace on your own. Tsarskoye Selo How long does the excursion to the Catherine Palace last?

Minibuses from the House of Soviets on Moskovskaya Square(342, 287, 347a and others), Moskovskaya metro station. Travel time is about 30 minutes.

Please note that the minibus stops directly next to the park, and the train station is located at a considerable distance from the park. Therefore, I strongly recommend getting to the museum-reserve by minibus. If you still want to go to Pushkin by train, then you can get from the train station to the park by minibus or on foot - about 20 minutes.

Electric trains from Vitebsky station. You can take the train at the Kupchino railway platform or at the Vitebsk station itself.

If time and money are valuable to you, it is recommended to take the train to Kupchino. To do this, you need to get to the Kupchino metro station, buy a ticket, and go through the underground passage to the railway platform. Travel time from the Kupchino railway platform is about 20 minutes. The interval of trains is 20-30 minutes. Near the Kupchino metro station there are several shopping centers with grocery and other stores.

Please note that Pushkin is a popular holiday destination for residents of St. Petersburg, so on weekends the number of visitors to the museum-reserve increases significantly. It is highly recommended to choose a weekday for your trip.

Catherine Park - operating hours in 2019

The park is open:

• May - July from 7:00 to 23:00
• August from 7:00 to 22:00
• September - April from 7:00 to 21:00.

The ticket office is open from April to October from 9:00 to 19:00.

Catherine Park - ticket prices in 2019

• Ticket prices in the summer (from April 25 to October 19):
  • for adults - 150 rub.
  • for schoolchildren over 16 years old and students - 80 rubles.
  • for pensioners of the Russian Federation and Belarus - 40 rubles.
• During the winter period (from October 20 to April 24) entrance to the park free.

Alexander Park - ticket prices and opening hours in 2019.

Free admission.

Catherine Palace (including the Amber Room) - opening hours in 2019

The world famous Amber Room is located in the Catherine Palace. A tour of the Amber Room is included in the standard tour of the Catherine Palace. Visitors are gathered in the palace hall in small groups of 15-20 people. The group follows the halls of the palace with a guide. In my opinion, the inspection is too quick - the tour takes about 20 minutes. Therefore, you are unlikely to have time to look at the interiors, listen to the guide and take photographs at the same time. The group lingers in the Amber Room for just a couple of minutes. However, usually no one forbids you to break away from your group and calmly stroll through the halls of the Catherine Palace.

Due to the very large number of visitors, tourists are led to the Catherine Palace by two routes (No. 1 and No. 2). Both routes include a tour of the most beautiful Great Hall and the famous Amber Room. Both routes are half the same, but route No. 1 contains very beautiful halls: the Cavalier Dining Room, the White State Dining Room, the Raspberry Pillar Room, the Green Pillar Room, the Portrait Hall, the Picture Hall, the Small White Dining Room, the Chinese Living Room of Alexander I and the Pantry. In route No. 2, these halls are replaced by exhibitions and a visit to the State Cabinet of Alexander I. Therefore, route No. 2 can be called shortened. If possible, you should choose route No. 1 to visit.

• June 2 - August 31
  • Every day from 12:00 to 19:00
  • On Mondays and Wednesdays, opening hours are extended until 20:00
  • Day off - Tuesday
  • The palace is closed on June 1, 5 and 8
• May 13-31 and September 1-30
  • Daily from 12:00 to 18:00
  • Day off - Tuesday

It is recommended to start your walk from the palace, because... There may be significant queues and changes in opening hours for visitors without groups. The ticket indicates the time of visit (groups start every 20 minutes).

Photography is allowed in the Catherine Palace and Park, with the exception of the Amber Room.

Catherine Palace (including the Amber Room) - ticket prices in 2019.

Cost of route No. 1 and route No. 2 until 18:00:

• • For adults - 700 rub.
  • For children under 16 years old - free
  • For students (from 16 years old), students and pensioners - 350 rubles.
• For foreign citizens:
  • For adults - 1000 rub.
  • For children under 16 years old - free
  • For students (from 16 years old) and students - 350 rubles.

Cost of route No. 2 after 18:00:

• For citizens of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan:
  • For adults - 850 rub.
  • For children under 16 years old - free
  • For students (from 16 years old), students and pensioners - 430 rubles.
• For foreign citizens:
  • For adults - 1200 rub.
  • For children under 16 years old - free
  • For students (from 16 years old) and students - 430 rubles.

• Save your park entrance ticket! A ticket to the palace is issued only upon presentation of a ticket to the park.
• Excursion in Russian is included in the ticket price
• There is an audio guide in English, French, German, and Chinese. The cost of renting an audio guide is 200 rubles. You must leave 1000 rubles or an identity document as a deposit

Alexander Palace - opening hours in 2019

Closed for restoration. The estimated completion date is 2020.

Museum-Lyceum A.S. Pushkin - operating hours in 2019

• From 10:30 to 18:00
• Days off - Tuesday and last Friday of the month
• The ticket office closes an hour earlier

Museum-Lyceum A.S. Pushkin is located near the Catherine Palace, at the beginning of Sadovaya Street.

Museum-Lyceum A.S. Pushkin - ticket prices in 2019

• visit with excursion
  • for adults - 330 rub.
  • for schoolchildren, students and pensioners - 240 rubles.
• visit without excursion
  • adults - 150 rub.
  • for schoolchildren, students and pensioners - 60 rubles.

“COMPARED TO TSROYA VILLAGE, EVERYTHING ELSE IS FLOWERS!”

The Amber Room is a tourist Mecca. With the start of the high season, millions of guests flock to Tsarskoe Selo to see with their own eyes the miracle of restoration with a mysterious history. The originals of the precious panels disappeared without a trace after the Great Patriotic War, and since then have been shrouded in secrets and mysteries. But tourists are satisfied with the restored version.

Kilometer-long queues stand at the ticket office of the museum-reserve from morning until late evening. And travel agencies call the Catherine Palace their main headache.

Tsarskoe Selo entered into an agreement with a limited number of travel agencies for the passage of organized groups. Those who are not on the list of lucky winners are forced to repurchase tickets. At the same time, the price increases one and a half times: from 700 to 1,300 rubles at best,” says Olga, an employee of a city travel agency. – But that’s not so bad. If we have a group of one hundred people, no one can give so many tickets - we have to get them from different places. Literally collecting bit by bit!

When the long-awaited tickets are finally found, the second test period begins. It's called "waiting in line."

Queue at the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo! Queue

Lately, in Tsarskoye Selo they are not allowing you to queue in advance. They say: you have tickets for 15:00, so come at 15:00,” Olga sighs. - And our tourists have trains at six or seven in the evening. It turns out to be a comical situation: they stand in line for two hours in order to walk around the entire museum in twenty minutes and run to the station. Some refuse. They say they don't need beauty at that price. Compared to Tsarskoye Selo, everything else is just flowers.

QUOTAS ARE OUTLAW, BUT “SAVED THE SITUATION”

Back in April, Smolny admitted that the museum administration had established quotas outside the law. They do not have the right to restrict visits to cultural property. Vice-Governor Igor Albin instructed the Committee on State Control, Use and Protection of Monuments (KGIOP) to force the leadership to abandon such measures. But all summer, travel agencies continued to be divided into the “chosen few” who were lucky, and everyone else who had to organize a “rat race” for tickets to the Catherine Palace.

We have no right to give any warnings regarding the organization of tourist flows. We decide for ourselves how to receive tourists,” says Olga Taratynova, director of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum.

According to her, quotas were “a good thing” and saved the situation in the face of a huge tourist flow, which the palace was simply unable to cope with.

Olga Taratynova about quotas in the Catherine Palace

Their goal was to somehow distribute the visit. Small travel agencies had small quotas, large ones – large ones,” Taratynova noted.

However, they promised to lift the restrictions starting next year. True, the management of Tsarskoe Selo predicts that this will only worsen the situation.

We will cancel the quota next year out of a sense of self-preservation. It is a reason for controversy and reproaches in our direction. We decided that it would be better to let the tourism business self-regulate. But this will lead to severe speculation and the buying of our tickets,” the director warns.

“SORRY FOR GRANDMOTHER FROM SAMARA”

Now the Catherine Palace can only accommodate 900 people per hour - and this is the main problem, for which, alas, there is no solution. If even more guests are allowed in, it could be a tragedy for the exhibits.

We monitor the humidity in the rooms, and every year we note an increase. After the end of the high season, grease deposits appear on porcelain and furniture, and they have to be cleaned. Despite the double protection slippers, the floors suffer greatly. Not all rooms have ventilation, and in summer the temperature on the upper floors rises to +29 degrees, Taratynova lists.

In European museums, in such situations, electronic recording is introduced via the Internet, but in Russian reality, such a system will hit hard, first of all, on compatriot tourists who come not with companies, but on their own.

Imagine, a grandmother came to us from Samara. She didn’t know about electronic recording; she doesn’t even have the Internet. “I feel sorry for her,” the manager admits.

In general, whatever one may say, there are only two ways out of the situation: if you want to see the Amber Room, you will have to be patient. Or visit Tsarskoe Selo in late autumn, winter, or spring - when there are not so many tourists.

Our founders ask us to constantly increase attendance, and we will do this, but not at the expense of the Catherine Palace, Olga Taratynova is firmly convinced.

NUMBER

1.3 million tourists visited Tsarskoye Selo from May to October. This is 68 thousand more visitors than last year.

We invite you to visit Pushkin ("Tsarskoye Selo") - an outstanding example of world architecture and landscape art, included in the UNESCO list.

Our excursion will begin with a visit to the monument to A.S. Pushkin and the Lyceum (externally), where the poet studied. Next, accompanied by an experienced guide, you will visit the pearl of Russian Baroque and the favorite summer residence of Catherine II - Grand Catherine Palace with his world famous Amber room(*the work of recreating the room after the war took 24 years), and you will also walk along the grand staircase made of white marble and through the main halls of the palace: the Great Hall, Anti-Chambers, Portrait and Picture Halls, the White Front and Cavalier Dining Rooms. You will see tiled stoves made according to Rastrelli's sketches. At the end of the tour, you will get acquainted with unique photographs of the palace during the Great Patriotic War, as well as the progress of its restoration after the war.

In the second part of the program you will complete Pwalk through one of the first landscape parks (~ 30 min.), where you will see garden sculpture, ponds, bridges, artificial canals, famous places such as the Cold Bath with Agate Rooms, the Hanging Garden, Cameron Gallery, the Hermitage, the Grotto, the Concert Hall, the Admiralty, the Lower and Upper Baths, the Granite Terrace , Pyramid, Chinese gazebo, Turkish bath, statue of "Girl with a jug", Chesme Column.

Why choose this excursion:

Our modern tourist buses They will delight you with their comfort, and large panoramic windows will allow you to see all the beauty of the city and its suburbs.

- Professional tour guide will give you maximum interesting information. Our requirements for a guide include not only a license, but also a great love for St. Petersburg. The tour in the palace is accompanied by experienced museum guide (~1 hour 30 min.)

- Optimal route which will allow you to see the main attractions of Pushkin: palace, Amber room, park.

A great opportunity to take unforgettable photos while walking through the park.

Welcome aboard City Bus!

Your journey will take place on a comfortable, modern and safe tourist class bus with large panoramic windows, soft comfortable seats with seat belts. Availability of all necessary licenses.

Check out ourRecommendations for an excursion to Pushkin:

• Comfortable shoes and clothing appropriate for the weather. We also recommend taking an umbrella or raincoat with you. *You can buy a raincoat in Pushkin.
• There are no free or organized meal times on this excursion. We recommend bringing something with you or planning a lunch before/after your trip.
• There is a free toilet in the palace. Time will be allotted for his visit.
• Some rules of the museum that will be useful to you: - a backpack and a cane umbrella will need to be handed over to the museum cloakroom (*you can only bring a small folding umbrella and a small handbag with you into the palace); - in the palace you can take photographs in all halls (without flash), except for the Amber Room (any photographs are prohibited there); - You cannot bring water bottles into the palace.