Greetings, friends! On this warm sunny day I decided to go for a walk in one of the suburban parks. I chose the palace park in Oranienbaum. Oranienbaum is considered one of the districts of St. Petersburg, but it's more like a small satellite city. The most convenient way to get to Oranienbaum is to take the suburban train. In this direction runs a comfortable modern train "Lastochka".
Picture House Museum
On the way you can admire the scenery. The train goes parallel to the old palace road and passes by several historical park ensembles. If you get tired of looking out the window, you can connect to wi-fi and stupor on your smartphone, but I always choose the scenery.
Lower Garden
The park in Oranienbaum is quite extensive, there are several entrances from different sides. From the train to the nearest entrance to the park is a little over a kilometer. But this time my way was delayed - and all thanks to my laziness. I went out to the station square and saw a bus pulling up to the bus stop. The bus was supposed to take me to the far entrance of the park, so I decided to take the bus instead of walking. The bus didn't let me down, and dropped me off exactly where I needed to go. But it turned out that the far side of the park was being renovated and this entrance was closed. I had to walk along the fence of the park for a long time to reach the other entrance. On the way I took a few pictures through the fence, but there was nothing interesting there - pits, piles of earth, concrete posts, and similar elements of the construction landscape. So I decided to skip the illustrations for this part of my walk and start directly with photos of the park.
Lower Garden
From the main entrance to the park, you can turn right and walk up the hill, or turn left and walk out into the Lower Garden. This is a small garden with a regular layout in front of the facade of the Menshikov Palace. This garden was created in 1717 - 1720. At the entrance to the Lower Garden there is a pavilion of the Picture House, inside there is a small museum of painting, but until the summer season this museum is open only on weekends.
Entrance to the Grand Menshikov Palace
While there are no leaves on the trees, the layout of the Lower Garden is clearly visible: everything is crisp and level, as if drawn with a ruler and a compass. This principle of layout was popular in the XVIII century. In the far part of the garden there is a maze of bushes, but to get lost in this maze is possible only in summer, but now the whole maze is visible through.
Grand Menshikov Palace
Behind the Lower Garden is that part of the park, which is now under reconstruction. So I had to go back to the entrance to get to the Menshikov Palace. This palace was built in 1711-1727 and has not been seriously rebuilt since, only the interiors have changed. The date of the construction is easy to guess from the architectural design: most of the palace has only one floor in height, only in the center is a two-story building.
Grand Menshikov Palace
At the southern gate of the palace there is a memorial sign in honor of its founder Alexander Menshikov. It is the orange tree, to which Oranienbaum owes its name. The lower part of the stele is decorated with the coat of arms of Prince Menshikov.
The far part of the park is closed to visitors, and the paths look something like this:
I walked around the accessible part of the park for a while, reached the pavilion of the Skating Slide, and turned back toward the train station. I decided to forego further experimentation with buses and walk, especially since it's really quite close.
Alley in the Oranienbaum Park
Sliding Hill Pavilion
Station square and station building
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| Smartphone | Google Pixel 3a |
| Location | Oranienbaum, Saint Petersburg, Russia |
This is my entry for the #WednesdayWalk challenge by 
