The Tsarskoye Selo Museum Reserve is probably one of the most famous attractions of St. Petersburg. I think almost every tourist who visited Northern capital, was here.

Tsarskoe Selo has beautiful parks, luxurious palaces– a huge territory permeated with history pre-revolutionary Russia.

Why I love Tsarskoe Selo

I've been here many times. It's a pleasure to visit this place again and again. Most of all I like to walk through Catherine Park. I talked about it in more detail in. It is divided into regular and landscape parks. For me, its last part is more interesting, but for beautiful photos Of course, Regular Park is also more popular among tourists. Its strict symmetry and abundance of all kinds of decorations makes the most vivid impression on the guests of the Village.

But Tsarskoye Selo is most famous for its palaces. Of course, first of all – the Catherine Palace. Its luxury and beauty are difficult to convey in words. This is a must see! The wealth and chic of that era is perfectly conveyed by the decoration and appearance palace


Of course, the Alexander Palace is less pompous. But it attracts guests in a completely different way. If the Catherine Palace is more formal, its halls and rooms do not give the impression that people once lived here (I talked about the Catherine Palace in more detail), then the interior decoration of the Alexander Palace, the preserved interior items make you believe and plunge into the home life of the imperial family.


I was lucky enough to visit the palace before it closed. The office of Nicholas II made the greatest impression on me.


A very cozy and truly homely atmosphere reigns in all rooms. It is easy to imagine that all the things that have survived to this day (and there are a lot of them) were used in everyday life by members of the Romanov family. Read separately about the palace.

Now let's plunge into history, I will tell you about how Tsarskoe Selo appeared. And then I will list all the most interesting places.

A little history

Tsarskoe Selo appeared thanks to Tsar Peter I. It was he who presented the lands of the Sarskaya Manor to his wife Ekaterina Alekseevna (the future Catherine I). The generous gift was greatly appreciated. The history of Tsarskoye Selo as a royal country residence began in 1710. Almost all subsequent Russian emperors loved this place. Ekaterina Alekseevna ordered the construction of a small two-story summer palace on the territory of the Village, as well as a park around it.

Later, Tsarskoe Selo was given the status of a nature reserve. And since 1990 it received its modern name - State Museum-Reserve"Tsarskoe Selo".

How to get there

The museum-reserve is located at: , Pushkin, st. Sadovaya, 7.


You can get there in the following ways:

WITH Vitebsky railway station There is an electric train from Pushkin to the Tsarskoe Selo station:

  • Ticket price is 40 rubles.
  • Travel time – 30 minutes.
  • You can get from the station to the museum using minibuses No. 371, 377, 382, ​​buses No. 371, 382, ​​or walk.
  • The journey on foot will take about 30 minutes.

From metro station "Moskovskaya" Minibuses go directly to the park:

  • Taxi numbers 286, 287, 342, 347, 545.
  • The stop is located behind the House of Soviets.
  • Usually there are many minibuses with large signs “Tsarskoe Selo”, “Parks of Tsarskoe Selo”, “Palaces”.
  • A minibus will take you there in 40 minutes, provided there are no traffic jams.
  • The fare will be about 40 rubles.

You can get to Tsarskoe Selo from Moskovsky Prospekt:

  • Bus number 187 stops opposite McDonald's.
  • Here you can also catch minibuses from the ring from the House of Soviets.
  • The bus is coming to the station (Pushkin).
  • The fare is 30 rubles.

From metro station "Kupchino" can be reached by minibus:

  • Taxi No. 545, 286, 287, bus No. 186.
  • Travel time is 30 minutes if there are no traffic jams.
  • The minibus ring is located on Vitebsky Prospekt on the metro side.

You can get to Tsarskoe Selo by taxi:

  • The trip will cost approximately 500–600 rubles one way.
  • Travel time is approximately 30 minutes if there are no traffic jams.

I like to get to Tsarskoye Selo by minibus from the Moskovskaya metro station. Due to the fact that there are always a lot of minibuses there, you can slowly walk up, take a seat and quickly and comfortably get directly to the museum. Along the way you can admire the city landscapes.

Opening hours and ticket prices

Catherine Park

Working hours:

  • from September to April from 7:00 to 21:00;
  • from May to July from 7:00 to 23:00;
  • in August – from 7:00 to 22:00.

Ticket:

  • from April 25 to October 20 – 120 rubles. At other times, admission is free.

Catherine Palace

This excursion is the most popular. The lines are the longest here. Therefore, when planning your day, first visit the palace. When purchasing a ticket, keep in mind that it is valid for an hour.

Working hours:

  • from June to August – from 12:00 to 20:00;
  • in May and September – from 12:00 to 19:00;
  • Please remember that the ticket office closes an hour earlier.
  • The day off is Tuesday, and from October to April - Tuesday and the last Monday of the month.

The museum offers two types of excursions:

  1. The route passes through: the Great Hall, the Dining Rooms, the Crimson and Green Pillar Rooms, the Picture and Portrait Rooms, the Amber Room, the Chinese Living Room, the Pantry, and the Waiter's Room.
    Ticket prices:
    1. adults – 580 rubles;
    2. pensioners – 290 rubles;
    3. cadets, members of artist unions, conscripts, members of Russian unions of architects and designers - 290 rubles;
    4. pupils over 16 years old and students – 290 rubles;
    5. visitors under 16 years of age – admission is free;
  2. The route passes through: the Great and Arabesque Halls, the Anti-Chambers, the Amber Room, the Picture Hall and the exhibition “The Romanovs in Tsarskoe Selo”.
    Ticket prices:
    1. adults – 400 rubles;
    2. pensioners – 200 rubles;
    3. cadets, members of the unions of artists, architects, designers of Russia, military personnel - 200 rubles;
    4. pupils over 16 years old and students – 200 rubles;
    5. Visitors under 16 years of age – admission is free.

Alexander Palace

IN this moment closed for reconstruction until 2018.

Museum-Lyceum of A. S. Pushkin

Located in the wing of the Catherine Palace. The entrance to the museum is separate.

Operating mode:

  • from 10.30 to 18.00. The ticket office is open until 17.00.

Cost of tickets with excursion:

  • adults – 200 rubles;
  • pensioners – 100 rubles;
  • students – 100 rubles;
  • visitors under 16 years old – 80 rubles.

Ticket prices without excursion:

  • adults – 120 rubles;
  • pensioners – 40 rubles;
  • students – 40 rubles;
  • Visitors under 16 years of age are free.

What to see

A visit to Tsarskoye Selo will take you the whole day. There are so many places to go!

Catherine Palace

First of all, head to the Catherine Palace. Groups of 20 people are allowed into the palace every 20 minutes. Having purchased a ticket, you must remember that you need to visit the museum within an hour.


The palace is incredibly beautiful! I would advise you to take a walk without a tour, because the guide very quickly leads guests through the halls, and there is no opportunity or time to examine all the beauty more carefully and in detail, to admire and admire everything. For myself, I choose to go to museums like a “savage.” Moreover, you can always join the group and listen, and then continue to wander in your own way. There are many beautiful halls in the palace, each of them is magnificent in its own way. The most famous are the Great Hall and the Amber Room.

Big hall

He is simply amazing! The whole room is simply buried in gold! Every detail of the interior is thought out to the smallest detail, elegant and unique in its beauty. As you know, official receptions and luxurious balls were held here.


To do this, a huge number of candles were lit in the evening, and the walls began to burn, shimmering with gold! The hall made an indelible impression on all guests.

the Amber Room

Incredibly beautiful room. It is rightly called one of the wonders of the world. We must not forget that the original amber panels that decorated the room were irretrievably lost during the Great Patriotic War.


Museum-Lyceum of A. S. Pushkin

After visiting the Catherine Palace, you can walk to the A. S. Pushkin Lyceum Museum. It is located in the wing of the Catherine Palace, which is adjacent to the park fence.


A very interesting excursion to the place where the famous Russian poet studied. You will be shown classrooms and halls, as well as personal rooms of lyceum students. It's amazing how modest the conditions were!

Catherine and Alexandrovsky parks




And many more interesting things can be seen here.


At the moment, the Alexander Palace is closed for reconstruction until 2018, but you can just admire the building itself. It is truly very beautiful and majestic. There are also many interesting monuments and structures in Alexander Park that you can explore. Entrance to the park is free, so it is very popular among local residents. Here you can go hiking, skiing, or spend time with your family on a picnic.

  • Big and Small whims unite Alexandrovsky and Catherine Parks. They are artificial bridges under which the road to the palaces passes. This photo clearly shows both the Big Caprice and the Small Caprice in the distance.

  • Big Chinese Bridge is located in front of the front parade ground of the Catherine Palace and leads to Alexander Park.

  • The White Tower is a complex of buildings in a medieval style. It was built specifically for the children of Emperor Nicholas I. Here the children studied military affairs, fencing and many other disciplines.

And that's far from all that can be seen here!

I hope my review was interesting.I wish you the most pleasant impressions from visiting Tsarskoye Selo!

And now we return again to the Catherine Palace in Pushkino, where the famous amber room is located. You can read about how we got to Tsarskoye Selo on our own.

When we walked past the Palace for the first time (it was around 11 am), we were scared by the queue that was waiting to open to get inside. Therefore, it was decided to start by walking around the wonderful

However, when we got here 2 hours later, the queue had not decreased at all. But going to Tsarskoe Selo and not visiting Catherine’s palace seemed impossible to us. Therefore, it was decided to definitely get inside.

For those who are planning to visit the Catherine Palace for the first time, I will describe how this can be done in practice. The Palace ticket office is located inside the building. But in order to get inside, there is a long line outside. The “throughput” of the palace is very low. Therefore, how often and how many people get inside, no one can say in advance.

At the same time, numerous tourist groups pass without a queue. Therefore, those who want to visit the palace on their own have to skip them.

The tail of our line ended near the front porch. Here.

As a result, we had to stand for about 40 minutes. As we were told, this is not long at all. “For example, on Monday this week the line stretched all the way to the entrance to the park. And people had to stand for more than two hours,” a security guard near the museum told us in confidence. Therefore, you need to keep this in mind and allow extra time for the queue.

Once inside, we had to spend more 30 minutes for various organizational events. We spent this time solving many problems.

1. Purchasing tickets. There are several cash register windows inside. But when about 100 people are launched, a queue forms for each of them. At the same time, they are required to present entrance tickets to the Park. If you don’t have them or they are lost, you will have to pay extra. You can find out the cost of tickets at the end of the article.

2. Ticket verification and individual search. Almost like being at an airport. Someone even left water bottles here. But no one warned us about this and we were not required to post them.

3. Group Formation. There is no other way to enter the palace. In a small room, special headphones and a radio are distributed in order to listen to the guide’s story. The guide himself, the excursion and shoe covers for each visitor are included in the ticket price.

All these actions, of course, did not add joy. It was very hectic and cramped. There is very little space near the entrance. Plus, there are also souvenir shops here and there are also a lot of people who are just getting ready or have already finished visiting the museum.

It’s very good that we were “positive” and well relaxed after a 2-hour walk around. Therefore, they were calm about everything that was happening. And they understood perfectly well that Catherine could not count on welcoming so many visitors to her Palace! 🙂

Well, perhaps that’s enough technical details, it’s time to start exploring Catherine’s palace.

Excursion to the Catherine Palace

Catherine Palace was built in the 18th century.

The external blue façade amazingly combines with the color of the sky, and the golden decoration shimmers festively in the sun, which makes the Catherine Palace unexpectedly light and airy. And this despite its enormous size!

The façade of the building is decorated with numerous figures of Atlanteans, caryatids and lions.

In the time of Catherine, all this was covered with gold. As the guide said, about 100 kilograms of gold were spent on gilding the external and internal decorations of the palace.

It must be said that the interior decoration is no less impressive than the external splendor.

And here we are standing near the marble staircase. The guide begins his story, and we gradually move to a completely different era and begin to feel a different rhythm of life.

Climbing the wide main staircase, we find ourselves in a large hall with luxurious paintings on the walls and ceiling.

Huge windows and mirrors, elegant lamps, light oak parquet floors, gilded trim - all this together creates a stunning impression.

The ceiling height is 8 meters, and the total area of ​​this main hall is 800 square meters. There are huge windows on two opposite sides, which makes the room unusually light and airy.

And you can admire and look at the painted ceiling for hours.

And in this huge space you feel completely different: somehow more majestic and free.

There are numerous carved compositions in the corners of the room.

The Front Enfilade is amazing. This is a long through passage through numerous rooms. Due to the abundance of gilded carvings, it received the name “Golden Enfilade”.

The uniqueness of the golden Front Enfilade in the Catherine Palace is that for the first time the length of the front rooms was equal to the length of the entire building.

The concept of adjacent rooms is well known to us even now. But how different this is from how they began in the Catherine Palace and how they ended in the Russian Khrushchev buildings. 🙁

Together with our guide we move from room to room. Everywhere has its own style, its own colors. Each room has a minimum of furniture, which adds even more free space.

Each room has multi-tiered tiled stoves with cobalt painting. If you look at it more closely, you can see various ledges, niches and columns on it. Can I install such a battery in my apartment? 🙂

We pass several dining rooms. The ceremonial tables are set, as if they are waiting for guests. Luxurious porcelain sets, crystal glasses and silverware.

And, of course, one of the wonders of the world (as the museum modestly declares it) is the famous Amber Room. The splendor of this room cannot be described. This is a colossal piece of jewelry!

You can enlarge these secret photos by clicking on them with your mouse. Don't tell anyone what you saw! The filming was carried out with a hidden camera, as photography is prohibited here. 🙄

The many shades of amber and how they are selected according to color are surprising. As well as amazing sculptures carved from this stone.

The scale of the work is impressive. To recreate all this beauty, restorers worked for 24 years! And since 2003, the Amber Room of the Catherine Palace amazes and delights all visitors. This is where you want to stay longer and not take your eyes off this amazing man-made MIRACLE!

Having passed through all these wonderful rooms, we again find ourselves on the marble staircase. There are amazing vases and jugs on the walls.

Our excursion is coming to an end. But we are also waiting for an exhibition of photographs, which allows us to appreciate the scale of the tragedy of the Catherine Palace during the Great Patriotic War, and the colossal work that restorers had to do over the years so that we can now again touch our Russian history.

The sad history of Catherine's Palace

Here are just a few photos of how in an instant you can destroy something that has been created over centuries.

The building was almost completely destroyed,

more than 80% of the interior and exterior decoration was lost. Even many trees in the park were cut down.

By 2014, 32 of the 58 halls had been restored.

Part of the façade is still closed and restoration work is underway. Of course, this contrast is impressive. Especially after the luxury we just saw.

The excursion lasted about 40 minutes. After that, we handed over our microphones and headphones, which were then packed into bags to be handed over to the next group. It’s good that the shoe covers were disposable. 🙂

This is almost the end of our wonderful walk. On the street we again saw a queue standing in the Catherine Palace. Its length even increased a little.

Opening hours and ticket prices

Entrance opens at 12 o'clock. Day off is Tuesday.

Ticket price is 400 rubles. (preferential 200 rub.). Prices are for summer 2014.

I have an idea! On the website of the Museum of the Catherine Palace and Park it is possible to purchase tickets online: tkt.tzar.ru/ru/billboard/1

Cost 670 rub. includes entrance to both the park and the palace. As a result, it turns out to be a little more expensive (this kit cost us 520 rubles). But there is a possibility that with these tickets it will be possible to get everywhere without queuing, since a limited number of them are sold per day: only 100 pieces. If anyone tries this option on themselves, write in the comments how it works!

I suggest once again taking a virtual video walk through the Catherine Palace and Park to feel the atmosphere of this historical place.

Well, we had to get to the city of St. Petersburg. There were no problems with the bus. After interviewing several passers-by, we easily found the stop. And, having paid 35 rubles, we were in the city within 35 minutes. The bus dropped us off near the Moskovskaya metro station.

Then it was quite easy to get to our temporary home. But our cultural program for this day is not over yet. In the evening there was a visit to. And it was necessary to prepare for this event, because someone had been waiting for it all their lives!

Our visit to the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo (Pushkin) took place on June 27, 2014. On the map of places in St. Petersburg and Leningrad region, where I have already been able to visit.

Write in the comments which palaces you visited and which of them made the strongest impression.

“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 with Tsarskoe 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.

Coming to St. Petersburg and not visiting Tsarskoe Selo is a mess! Decent tourists don't behave like that. My Italians were decent tourists, but unlucky: they did not get a quota to visit the Catherine Palace as organized tourists. This meant: they were not destined to come to the museum at the appointed time and see the sights without long jostling in line. That's why they came with me as "wild" tourists. This doomed them to a long, at least two hours, standing at the box office to buy tickets.

Peculiarities of organizing the work of the Tsarskoye Selo Museum (Catherine Palace). This year the museum switched to new methods of work. For travel agencies, reservations open at 00.00 on the 20th of the previous month and travel companies, knowing the exact dates and the number of tourists doomed to visit Tsarskoe Selo, are trying to book places for themselves. In 5 minutes all available places for travel companies will run out. Those who did not get a place hope that three days before the scheduled visit someone will be returned - it’s no secret that large companies book places “for future use,” just in case, and in large blocks at once. And it happens to them that they overestimate the number of expected tourists. Then, within three days, free places appear, which managers watch on the Internet in the hope of snatching up. Another important point: while the museum is officially open from 10 o’clock, tickets for “wild” tourists begin to be sold from 12 o’clock. From 10 to 12 am, travel companies that have booked and purchased places enter. From 12 to 16, the ticket office is open for unorganized visitors; from 16 to 18, travel agencies and unorganized visitors again pass by if there are few travel agencies. I would like to note that this year the museum has turned its face to the “non-organizers”: the time for purchasing tickets at the box office has increased by 2 hours, because last year tickets were sold to them according to the schedule: 12.00 - 14.00 and 16.00 to 17.00.

As I already said, my tourists were not lucky in any way: they could not book a quota, there were no extra places for three days. And on June 27 we went to the Queue in Tsarskoe Selo. We arrived at 10 am. There were few people in front of the entrance:

But pay attention to the empty places in the queue. Since Blokha knows some of the peculiarities of forming a queue at museums that are in great demand, she went to clarify exactly how many people were in front of us. It turned out - about 150. As you understand, there is a queue - there is a business: standing in this queue and taking seats. The lady said that her group was walking in the park. Yeah, we know! The group will arrive at 11.50 and, without painful waiting in the sun, will enter the palace. Two strong guys also took a turn, as subsequent events will show, for our Chinese friends who are happily working in St. Petersburg without having any licenses. The tough guys, anticipating my questions, assertively say: “Where does it say in our Constitution that we cannot wait in line?” Indeed, the Constitution does not say anything about the impossibility of standing in line (either for free or for money). The guide has only one problem: how to explain to his tourists, who have stood for more than two hours in the sun, why 150 “chosen ones” arrive 10 minutes before the opening and, proudly bypassing the sweaty, tired line, come up and stand at the very beginning?

The lady who has 100 people "walking in the park."

Strong guys who know the Constitution (in red and dark T-shirts).

We waited for the people who took the places behind us, I showed them my tourists - that they exist, and they are here, got acquainted with the accomplices of standing in line, and I let my sheep into the meadows, onto the fresh grass, for a walk in the park. Flea is an experienced queue waiter, so she came to the combat position prepared (there were two bottles of water in the bag, looking ahead, I will say that they were all drunk within three hours).

An hour later, at 11.00, the line looked like this:

Half an hour later, at 11.30, this:

Finally, we are approaching the cherished milestone, guys, Moscow is not behind us! Queue:

Of course, 100 tourists walking in the park pranced past us (only they came from the direction of the gate, not the park), 20 minutes before the entrance to the palace. The Chinese generally stood at the head of the queue at 11.55. A strong man, the museum security guard, gently pushed them aside, but only so that 100 people from the “lady with an umbrella” calmly entered the palace. But the guard was not so kind to my tourist children.

I'm telling you. From the photographs you can see that we are standing in the sun. After 11.30 the queue was packed very tightly, because... those 100 people came to the “lady with an umbrella”. It was painful to stand, so we sent our two Italian children to sit in the shade on a bench next to the entrance. The beginning of the queue is fenced with barriers to give the queue an artistically straight and orderly appearance, as well as to protect against entry into the queue by elements who want to enter without queueing.

When we finally stood at the finish line, these children just had to approach us from the side, where there was a small passage. But the strict security guard did his job perfectly! Having recently let a large group of Chinese pass from the same side, he now became very principled. And he thundered in a commanding voice that he wouldn’t let anyone in here, and that the children had to make their way through the entire line to us, and it was impossible to do this given the density of traffic. I explain to him that these are our children, we are tourists, and we have a certain love for children that does not allow us to force children to stand for an hour squeezed among people and under the scorching sun. The security guard did his job very well (of course, with two children it is very easy to be principled - this is not a Chinese group accompanied by two strong guys who know the Constitution!): “And if your children come here, then everyone else in the queue will be outraged ", the guard said judiciously (i.e., he expressed exactly the thoughts that possessed me and the tourists when they saw almost 200 people go to the front of the line a little earlier). Two Italian children against 200 tourists who had passed 15 minutes earlier! The whole line standing next to us said that they knew the children, and they stood here... But the uncle-guard did not give up an inch.

Dear Directorate of Tsarskoe Selo, please express your sovereign gratitude to the guard who was on duty at the entrance from the park on June 27 at 12.00! After 200 people were allowed into the places he occupied, he carried out his duties very conscientiously and did not allow two younger schoolchildren to see their parents, who stood in a stuffy queue! His work is worthy of every encouragement!

Our children, it’s good that they are children, eventually climbed over the fence and were reunited with their families. Then everything was fine: 2 hours of purgatory in the sun in the queue were compensated by an hour spent in the paradise of the palace, the tourists left, as they write in the most banal reviews, “tired but happy.”

What is this story for? Does Flea really hope that order will be restored in the queue? No way! The business in line is well established and functioning perfectly. This is just advice for those who are going to Tsarskoe Selo: take a chair, an umbrella, a fan and sunscreen with you. Oh, don’t forget to take sedatives: Novopassit or Persen. And - have a nice visit to Tsarskoe Selo!