The Catherine Palace, named after Catherine the Great who ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796 (after deposing her husband Czar Peter the 3rd) is located at a town called Pushkin about 20 km from St. Petersburg. This gorgeous blue, white and gold palace is also called the Summer Palace.

It is built in the baroque style and its face has to be something like 300 meters long. 110 ten statues of Atlas line the front and back faces of the palace and appear to be supporting the structure on their shoulders. When we visited here in 2003 the statues were all painted in gold leaf. Now however they are in a terracotta type colour. Our guide told us that when the GFC hit, there was no funding for maintaining the palace and many other buildings, however funding has recently come available so she thinks they will be once more gold leafed. We could see some evidence of this occurring – let's hope it’s so.

The first principal room visited at the Catherine Palace is the grand ballroom, often called the Hall of Mirrors. This takes opulence to a whole different level –it’s one of the most dazzling rooms I’ve ever seen. And I think it’d probably rate like that for most people. The combination of beautiful, intricate carving, ornate plaster work, gold leafing, inset mirrors, elaborate architraves and dazzling painted ceiling are truly mind blowing. All you can really do is wander around agape.

The tour from there takes in a succession of beautiful rooms running along the front face of the palace on the first floor. Each room was built in a different theme, and most of them have huge, ornate blue and white porcelain ovens in one corner – these actually served as heaters during the long, cold Russian winters. The rooms contain an assortment of artworks, furniture and other chattels dating from the 18th century when the palace was built. It was used by the various Czars through the ages as a place for formal entertaining during the summer months.

The most famous room at the Catherine Palace is the Amber Room. It’s difficult in words to do this amazing sight justice – so please take a look at my photos. However, here’s a potted history and description of the room. It is decorated floor to ceiling with millions of pieces of polished amber. Amber is a semi-precious stone formed from tree sap that is millions of years of old, and found in the Baltic region. The amber in the Amber Room has been fashioned into decorative panels which line the walls along with other adornments such as micro mosaics in coloured stones.

The room was won by Peter the Great from the Kind of Prussia in a card game. It was transported to, and installed in the Summer Palace. And there it remained until the Nazis invaded Russian during the Second World War. The custodians in charge of caring for Russia’s artworks and historic sights, packed as many as possible of the hundreds of thousands of paintings, tapestries, statues, ceramics, jewellery, glassware etc. and shipped them to various parts of Russia for safekeeping. The Amber Room however was too large to crate and ship in the time available, so it was hidden behind plain wooden panelling.

During the siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad in 1917)- Pushkin, where the Catherine Palace is located was on the front line. The Nazis rampaged the palace, and destroyed much of it. In the process they apparently found the Amber Room and 'stole’ it as they did with so many of Europe’s artworks during the war. There is another school of thought, that the Amber Room was actually destroyed during the bombardment of the palace. But no one is really sure. One thing is clear though: the Amber Room had gone. Decades have been spent trying to locate it to no avail.

However, in the 1980s-90s a large German corporation – I can’t remember which – funded the recreation of the room. The craftsmen that did this have done an amazing job. They worked from paintings and photographs of the original room – and the result is stunning. The Amber Room as seen today truly is unforgettably beautiful. The recreated room was actually unveiled only a month before we visited the Catherine Palace in May 2003. So we were very privileged to see it then. One thing that has changed since then is that photography is no longer allowed in the Amber Room. Thus I bought some photographs and have reproduced them so you can see what I’m gushing about.

A number of rooms at the Catherine Palace were undergoing restoration so we didn’t get to see everything that we did last time, but nonetheless the rooms we did visit were more than enough to sate the thirst for looking at and marvelling at the beauty of the works created during such a bygone era.