Jeppson's World Tour: Tsaritsino Castle

This is called Tsaritsino Castle. It belonged to Catherine the Great. It was never actually completed. She died before its completion. It is over 700 hectacres. I just looked that up and that equates to just over 1700 acres. There are ponds, fountains, a church, kitchen house, and lots of other buildings and beautiful grounds to walk around. Just recently have "they" finished the Grand Palace/castle (The actually only finished a few rooms to look like it would have when it was being built. The rest of it is un-visitable). When we were here before ('99), it was still in the abandoned state that it was left in when Catherine the Great died. I think my boys would have enjoyed it more if it were still abandoned and we were able to roam in and out of the castle. But, it was still pretty cool. It was so weird for me to see it and remember what it looked like before. We came here 15 years ago with my parents, when Ethan was 7 months old. He couldn't remember any of it...

There are these I love Moscow all around town. So, we occasionally get pictures with them. Today, Dalton opted out. You can see the castle on top of the green hill. On the left of the heart is the church for the castle. The building above the heart and to the right is the roof of the castle.

The estate has many beautiful features. One of which is this cool fountain. There are a million lights under the water so, I bet it is amazing at night.

I asked Seth and his friend, Luke to stand in front of the fountain so I could get a picture. This is what I got...

This is the front side of the castle.

This archway takes you from the front to the back. It is huge and crazy amazing in real life.

Here are two outfits that belonged to Catherine the Great. We decided she probably had to walk through the doorways sideways. Not the most flattering of styles.

This is what the door knobs were. Super cool! You pull the huge stone ball and it opens the door. I kept going in and out of the room just so I could keep using the door knob.

This room looks very yellow but it is actually gold! Ok, a little bit of it is yellow but it is mostly gold. The floors were all wood inlays. CRAZY AMAZING!!

Catherine in here prime.

One thing I will say for "the olden days" is, they had serious wood working skills!

but not such great painting skills...

This floor blew me away! So, I took a picture but then I realized you can't even tell it is a floor so, I had Ethan put his feel in the picture so you could have something to compare it to.

Red room

You can rent fancy clothes and get your pictures taken. We wanted to do it so bad but, we decided to wait until Chris could come with us. So, be watching for it!

Is it just me or does she have a tiny head?

This is a tapestry and it was huge! Like, the size of the entire wall! The frame is part of the tapestry. I was entranced by this but the camera, yet again, does not do it justice.