The Catherine Palace is named after Catherine I, the wife of
Peter the Great, who ruled Russia for two years after her
husband's death. Originally a modest two-storey building
commissioned by Peter for Catherine in 1717, the Catherine
Palace owes its awesome grandeur to their daughter, Empress
Elizabeth, who chose Tsarskoe Selo as her chief summer
residence. Starting in 1743, the building was reconstructed by
four different architects, before Bartholomeo Rastrelli, Chief
Architect of the Imperial Court, was instructed to completely
redesign the building on a scale to rival Versailles. The
resultant palace, completed in 1756, is nearly 1km in
circumference, with elaborately decorated blue-and-white facades
featuring gilded atlantes, caryatids and pilasters designed by
German sculptor Johann Franz Dunker, who also worked with
Rastrelli on the palace's original interiors. In Elizabeth's
reign it took over 100kg of gold to decorate the palace
exteriors, an excess that was deplored by Catherine the Great
when she