Wednesday Walk in the suburban park in Strelna

Golden autumn - it always ends too quickly. A real golden autumn lasts only a few days. In September (and sometimes even at the end of August) the leaves on the trees start to turn yellow, but for a few more weeks the main colour of the tree crowns remains green. Yellow, orange and red remain only individual accents of colour in a sea of green. And then somehow suddenly this familiar calm green with yellow tints is replaced by an explosion of colour, and the golden foliage shines against the blue sky. If we are lucky, the maximum of this golden glow is on sunny days. The weather in autumn is not very predictable, it can rain for long periods of time or even snow.

On this sunny autumn day I decided to drive to Strelna to take a walk in the suburban park. Strelna is one of the palatial suburbs of St Petersburg. Strelna is not as popular as Peterhof or Pushkin, but you can find many places for pleasant walks in Strelna as well. This time I walked in Orlovsky Park and near Lvovsky Palace.

Perhaps the main historical attraction of Strelna is the travelling palace of Emperor Peter the Great. Strelna is located about halfway between St Petersburg and Peterhof. The road to Kronstadt and Oranienbaum also passes through Strelna. At the beginning of the XVIII century the Emperor ordered to build a small palace for recreation in Strelna, and this building has survived to this day. In those distant times Strelna was a country place. Nowadays it is hard to imagine that someone could need a special place for rest at such a short distance from the city. All distances seem to have shortened a lot:) You can come to Strelna by ordinary city transport - by bus or by tram.

The best place for a walk in Strelna is Orlovsky Park, it is small but very cosy. The park is located on the bank of Orlovsky pond and was arranged in the XIX century. A wooden palace in Gothic style was built on the bank of the pond for Count Orlov, and a park was laid out around it. Unfortunately, the wooden palace has not survived to this day. However, a well, a ruin tower and a bridge in pseudo-Gothic style have been preserved in the park.

A little away from the Orlovsky Park is the palace of Prince Lvov, also built in the first half of the 19th century in the then popular pseudo-Gothic style. The trees come almost right up to the palace, so it is very difficult to take a photo where the whole palace will be clearly visible. I took some vertical shots and combined them into a small collage. In front of the main facade of the palace there is a monument to Prince Alexander Lvov. The prince was a firefighting enthusiast and is depicted wearing a fire helmet.

I walked round the palace and came back to Orlovsky Park. It seemed like a very short walk, but under the crowns of the trees it became noticeably gloomier during this time. Autumn days are short, and the slanting rays of the sun hardly broke through the golden crowns of the trees, giving us the last minutes of a beautiful autumn day.

This is my entry for the #WednesdayWalk challenge by @tattoodjay.