Beautiful Sunday: walk around Gatchina

I really love Gatchina. It is a small town 40 kilometers from St. Petersburg, founded, judging by historical documents, no later than the 15th century. The city center is a complex combination of architectural monuments - there are majestic cathedrals, solid stone houses, and wooden houses decorated with fanciful carvings. In the XVIII century the area near the town began to be used for hunting by the royalty. The Great Gatchina Palace, which resembled a hunting castle, was built, and a large landscape park was arranged and a hunting preserve was organized.

The Palace Park is very picturesque and is a great place to walk around, but this time I decided to walk not in the park, but around the city. In order to get to the park, I would have to go straight from the suburban train, but I turned right and soon came to the Smolensk Gate, which formalizes the entrance to the city of Gatchina by road. On the opposite side of the street I noticed a cafe with tables made of beer barrels. These barrels looked very nice. I wanted to go closer to get a close-up photo of them, but the traffic on this road was too busy and the crosswalk was behind me... I had to limit myself to a photo from the side of the road.

Although I had planned to walk around the city, at this point I briefly turned to the park - I looked on the map that such a route would allow me to come to one of the old streets in the most pleasant way. I knew that there were many old wooden houses preserved in Gatchina, but the sight of the old streets still surprised and charmed me. Small wooden houses decorated with wooden lace and drowning in greenery, a calm and relaxed atmosphere of a weekend in a small town.

Among the wooden houses, there were sometimes stone buildings, and one of the buildings stumped me. As I looked from the front, I thought I was seeing one of the examples of wooden architecture - but when I got closer, I saw a brick side wall.

The white building with blue domes is the Intercession Cathedral, an Orthodox church built in the early 20th century. In the courtyard of the church you can see a wooden house in Art Nouveau style - in the photo it is partially hidden by the foliage of trees.

Gradually I reached the Administration building. At first glance it looks like a typical mid-20th century neoclassical building. But boards inform tourists that it is not "neo", but a real classicism, the building was built in the XVIII century and is one of the architectural monuments of the city. I came even closer and found that the facade of the building is decorated with the inscription "Happy New Year!". Indeed, why make a fuss and dismantle this inscription every year - just a few months and it will become relevant again!

I wanted to reach a very original Art Nouveau building - the museum-estate of the artist P.E. Scherbov. But it turned out that the repair work in this manor is not finished yet, and the museum is temporarily not working.

The area of the city behind this manor is no longer a historical center. There was mass residential development here in the second half of the XX century, and the typical building would look boring, if on the way I did not occasionally meet old buildings, miraculously survived among the five-storey and nine-storey buildings. Perhaps, this is not a bad place for photographing contrasts: an old wooden house against the background of a high-rise residential building and others like it. But my walk was coming to an end. I could already see a piece of yellow wall ahead - it was the station building, and I had to hurry to catch the suburban train.