The Catherine Palace was one of two tsarist palaces built near a town which was called in the days of Imperial Russia, Tsarskoe Selo or "Tsar's Village." Today, it's called Pushkin, after a famous Russian writer who studied there.

The Catherine and the other palace, the Alexander Palace, were built five hundred yards apart in the Imperial Park. Tsarskoe Selo was a fairy land, a miniature world for the tsars and empresses as an artificial, isolated world. In the park, there were Turkish baths, a Chinese pagoda, even an artificial lake! There were also winding pony paths and a in the lake was an island on which was built a play house for Anastasia and her siblings. It, like the palaces, still stands today.

Tsarskoe Selo was started by Catherine I who wanted a retreat from her husbands granite city on the Neva marshes. You see, Catherine I was the wife of Peter the Great, who built St. Petersburg. Their daughter, Elizabeth, spent ten million rubles to build the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, but then she built a canal from Petersburg to Tsarskoe, because she hated the bumpy carriage rides. She died before the canal was done.

Empress Elizabeth, in 1752, had the architect Rastrelli build a palace at Tsarskoe that would outshine the palace of Versailles in France. So he built the blue and white Catherine, which had more than two hundred rooms! The palace was so great, that Empress Elizabeth made Rastrelli a Russian count! A French ambassador to Elizabeth's court said that the palace lacked only one thing--a cover of glass to protect such a masterpeice. It was named after Catherine I.

Even inside, the Catherine Palace was a marvel to behold for the tsars. Inside, there were long polished halls of marble, rooms furnished in marble, mahogany, gold, crystal, velvet and silk. Under huge chandeliers, Oriental carpets were laid down on gleaming floors. There was even one room made entirely out of amer, called The Amber Room. In the winter, sapphire-and-silver curtains shut out the gloomy Russian twilight. Huge porcelain stoves warmed the rooms. In every season, Empress Alexandra, Anastasia's mother, had the rooms filled with flowers shipped from the Crimea. Thousands of servants were required to keep the palace up and its sovereigns happy. Sorry to say, but my resource on the palace says nothing about servants quarters or secret wall panels.

The palace had or has, a ballroom like the one in the movie! Except, the ballroom doesn't have a staircase leading to the dance floor. No portraits on the walls either. No hall of mirriors exists at all. But pictures I've seen of the ballroom do look like the one in the movie. The staircase on which Anya asks if anyone was home is an actual staircase.

Unfortunetly, the Catherine and Alexander Palaces were hurt really bad duiring World War II. But they were restored and are now grand museums, showing the elegance and splender that they once were for the tsars only one hundred years ago.