Return to Russia: The Catherine Palace: True Rococo «

Return to Russia: The Catherine Palace: True Rococo

Saturday 26th May 2018

Prince Dmitri had had enough of palaces by the time we gained Tsarskoye Selo, which is to St Petersburg what Windsor is to London, in the Royal sense at least. Nothing would persuade him that the Catherine Palace is more than bling. I tried to explain how the elements dissolve on closer examination, the pilasters aren’t really pilasters, just the outline of a pilaster, and don’t even pretend to support anything; the doorways appear to be emphasised by heavy gold pillars on either side but these are at some remove from the actual opening which is so swathed in disconcerting decoration going every which way.

On the outside the Catherine Palace is in the frightening monumental bedroom style, the same as the Winter Palace. A massive great terrace of plaster massiveness ; some summer palace for Catherine the Great. Not in the slightest bit pastoral, or even summery. But within I thought the rooms some of the finest sights we saw in Russia and free of the later associations of tyranny, bloodbath and incompetence. Catherine the Great wasn’t a perfect dear, I know. Really I know nothing about her. But I’ve got such a feeling she was enlightened and simply charming, deep down.

I should mention the Amber Room: it’s so famous and was stolen by the Germans from the Catherine Palace during the War, subsequently to disappear. In fact the whole of the interior of the Catherine Palace has been extensively re-constructed after war damage, but superbly done. Now the Amber Room has been re-created at a cost of 19 million euros. You’ve not allowed to graph it but we thought it looked like sick.

The Alexander Palace was closed for restauro. No hope of seeing Nicky and Alix’s rooms… but one day. This is the second palace of Tsarkoye Selo. Really, all these palaces. The Romanovs seemed to accumulate them in a way that couldn’t have been good for them. Why not make do with one? In St Petersburg they had a clutch too. The Alexander Palace was supposed to be nice and plain and simple, because Nicky really liked the style provided by Maples of the Tottenham Court Road. Swirly gilding was too much for him, poor thing. Alexander Palace is a great yellow thing, from what we could see by leaping up beside the builders’ fence in front of it. Not hugely friendly.’Nicky and Alix,’ we screamed, ‘Come out now. We know you’re in there.’ It was that visit to the Beth Chatto garden all over again, when Robert Nevil and I saw England’s national gardener doing the washing up in her bungalow in the midst of the garden: ‘Come out, Beth,’ we megaphoned, ‘we know you’re in there.’

The grounds are bleak. Here the Imperial family were held under house arrest before their removal to the fateful house in Ekaterinburg. Apparently they trooped off each day to the kitchen garden for enthusiastic veg gardening and Nicky chopped logs in the miserable thin woods. There was quite a lack of loveliness.