St. Petersburg is one of the most fabulous tourist destinations in Russia. Almost all the travel agencies have most of their focus on the St. Petersburg tour beside Tour to Moscow and others. One of the reasons behind this decision is the number of attractions inside the city. You can find several amusing attractions in St. Petersburg, from museums to cultural and recreational centers. Some of Russia's top attractions are in St. Petersburg as well, including one of the most excellent museums in Russia, the second-largest art museum in the world after Paris's Louvre, The State Hermitage Museum. There are several historical sites, beautiful parks, majestic palaces, and other attractive places in St. Petersburg as well. So while St. Petersburg has enough attractions to entertain tourists for several days, most travel agencies insist their tourists check out suburbs of St. Petersburg as well and they have a good reason for that; suburbs of St. Petersburg is full of beautiful, majestic, and significant parks and palaces that formerly belonged to the imperial family, but now they're all turned to the top attractive places of St. Petersburg in Russia tour. While no one can visit all the attractions of St. Petersburg in one trip to Russia, tourists have to come up with a plan to visit the most major ones or the ones that suit their interest the most, that's why travel agencies only recommend some of these places on their tour to Russia program. However, if you want to know which one of these suburbs attractions of St. Petersburg is more suit your interest, you have to know about them before the beginning of your travel to Russia. Here are the top three places that you can visit during your tour to Russia in St. Petersburg, starting with the most major one, Peterhof.
Peterhof
Although most people refer to the Grand Palace and the two Parks as Peterhof, it contains several other buildings, including the Monplaisir, Marly Palace, Peterhof Hermitage, and Nicholas I's Cottage Palace as well as the upper garden, Nizhny Park, and the Grand Palace. In Peter I's vision, Peterhof was supposed to be the Versailles of Russia. Even now, some locals refer to it as Versaille, but it was Peter's daughter Empress Elizabeth, who was in love with the estate and ordered to expand it during her reign. After several years, Peterhof again became the Offical imperial resident of the Tsar during Nicholas I's reign, who built the modest Palace Cottage in the lower garden. For travel agencies and most tourists, Nizhny Park or the Lower Garden is the essential section of the place, mainly because of the Grand Cascade and the fountains. However, there is more beauty around Peterhof, which we at the Star Travel Group suggest our tourists visit. That is also why we recommend our tourists use the hydrofoils on their return to St. Petersburg, not the other way around because if you take the hydrofoil to Peterhof, you can only visit Nizhny Park. Therefore, you will lose the opportunity to see the rest of the place as Peterhof's tour policies imply. Nizhny Park is one of the most significant attractions of St. Petersburg on tour to Russia, so there is a little chance that it won't be included in your Russia tour's plan.
Pushkin
Tsarskoe Selo, or as it called today, Pushkin is another suburb imperial estate in St. Petersburg, which shows how ambition Russian rulers were in the past. Tsarskoe Selo, which its name changed after the October Revolution to Pushkin, is the house of two majestic palaces and two vast parks around them. The Catherine Palace and Alexander Palace are both two of the most exceptional palaces outside St. Petersburg. However, Catherine Palace, which was built by Bartolomeo Rastrelli for Empress Elizabeth, is the main attraction of the area with its famous Amber Room. Although Catherine Palace is not the only attraction in Tsarskoe Selo, Alexander Palace and two parks have enough amusement to entertain tourists during the tour to Russia. Still, most travel agencies, including us at the Star Travel Group, would suggest our tourists see the Amber room inside the Catherine Palace. This room is entirely built with amber, from floor, walls, and ceiling to furniture and decorations all made out of amber. It's one of the most beautiful places in Tsarskoe Selo, which you can visit during your Russia tour. If you've got enough time on your tour to St. Petersburg, we suggest visiting Catherine Park, which is the result of generation of Romanov's family effort to create a beautiful garden outside the city, as well as other pavilions in the area, including the Hermitage, the Turkish Baths, and Museum of Festive Horse Carriages on your tour to Russia.
Pavlovsk
Among grand imperial estates outside St. Petersburg, Pavlovsk is the youngest one. The land in which Pavlovsk stands was a gift from Empress Catherine the Great to his son, Pavel I, in honor of the birth of his son and grandson of the Empress. However, there's another theory that Empress Catherine the Great wanted to live without his son, yet, she tried to keep him and his family close; therefore, she gave the Pavlovsk as a gift to achieve both goals. The Grand Palace at Pavlovsk and the exceptional garden around it are branded with Maria Feodorovna, wife of Pavel in terms of design and architecture. In comparison to the other estates, Peterhof and Pushkin, Pavlovsk is less majestic, yet, it worth visiting on tour to Russia because of the museum inside the grand palace and the significant garden. It is one of the imperial estates that we at the Star Travel Group recommend our tourists visit on their Russia Tour.
Besides Peterhof, Tsarskoe Selo, and Pavlovsk, there are two other imperial estates in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, Oranienbaum, or Lomonosov, and the famous Gatchina. Although both of them worth visiting if you've got enough time on your tour to Russia, because of their distance and the lack of time on Russia tours, we at the Star Travel Group don't recommend you to spend your precious time and energy to visit them, unless you've seen all the other major attractions of St. Petersburg and its suburban area beforehand. However, if you want to learn about these two palaces or learn more about the other three before visiting St. Petersburg, you can always read about them on our weblog.
