105 years ago, the former Imperial Summer Residence of Tsarskoe Selo became a museum. The first museum-goers entered the Catherine Palace on 9 June 1918, the park pavilions and the Alexander Palace on 23 June 1918.
A special commissions were set up by the new government in May 1917 to inventory St Petersburg's (then Petrograd's) former suburban imperial palaces before opening them to the public. The Tsarskoe Selo Commission was headed by architect George Loukomski. The Commission based the new inventories on detailed description of the 1860s and 1919s, as well as coulour Autochromes of the palace interiors made by Andrei Zeest in 1917.
As art historian Alexandre Benois described the work of the Commission, "We all were witnesses to an amazing phenomenon: the most critical moments of the Russian Revolution passed almost without damage to the historical and artistic monuments... We could visit Tsarskoe, Pavlovsk, Gatchina, Oranienbaum and Peterhof again and admire all their beauty as if nothing had happened, but the best and most interesting sides of the vanished world are preserved for us and for future generations".
Almost destroyed during the Second World War, the palaces and parks of Tsarskoe Selo have been in restoration for many decades. The recent years saw the rebirth of the Lyons Hall and the Chapel of the Catherine Palace, the private rooms of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra in the Alexander Palace, the Agate Rooms in the Catherine Park, the Arsenal and Chapelle in the Alexander Park, and the Martial Chamber housing Russia's first museum of the First World War.
One of modern Russia's most-visited museums, Tsarskoe Selo now comprises three palaces, three parks, dozens of pavilions, and a collection of over 56,000 artefacts.
