(Source: http://baltiatour-spb.ru/gatchina)

Gatchina is an ambivalent place in all respects. Knight's castles, humpbacked small bridges and postcard views coexist here with the traces of life of surrounding chavs and simple cottages interfering the secured zone.

Unlike Pavlovsk or Peterhof, Gatchina administrative status is a regional center in the Leningrad region, but the museum-reserve is managed from St. Petersburg. The palace and the park, of course, first of all is interesting for travelers, however, and the city itself is not the most usual.

Paul who obsessed with the German order built it according to the model of the regular Prussian towns. There are clean cosy streets, old two-story houses in the town, and blue dome of the Pokrovsky Cathedral is visible everywhere. Exemplary Soviet islands, such as cinema "Pobeda", inserted directly into the historic center, are met among this splendor. Inside it is decorated with colorful mosaic panels in the spirit of socialist surrealism: Lenin looking into space.

Adherents of old times dream of building demolition, but it has already become a new story. The cinema is in excellent condition. The famous Gatchina movie festival takes place here. Museum Gatchina is impossible to compare with Pavlovsk. It is a sort of architectural couple. Pavlovsk with its romantic ruins, flowerbeds and music is a “lady’s toy” and  the estate of Queen, and Gatchina with Priory castle and knights amusement facilities ia a project of the Emperor, who loved the game in soldiers. His extravagant taste is visible not only in the medieval buildings, but also in strange structures like Birch House, which is indistinguishable from afar high woodpile. The monument to Paul I was firstly erected before the Gatchina Palace, and then repeated in Pavlovsk.