Rules for visitors who come to the Catherine Palace at the Tsarskoe Selo (town of Pushkin) eager to see the famous Amber Room and other beautiful premises don’t differ much from the ones accepted at other great museums around the world. What makes these rules special is that missing them may result into a mess and less comfort during overcrowded high season.
The visitors’ rules for the palace are not translated in English, so we do it here for you. It’s important to know them before your arrival at the site as you will avoid loss of time and nervous energy and will not cause problems to your fellow travelers.
In first half of 2019, the Tsarskoe Selo museum’s traffic was 1.8 million visitors, which will possible make up more than four million in 2019 totally (the second half tends to be much busier due to enormous attendance in July and August). That’s going to be another record. In 2018, it was nearly four million.
From May to October, visitors are queuing up to the Catherine Palace and being forced to wait for more than five hours. You can easily imagine that groups are moving very close to each other and are packed into a very tight schedule. So if you unluckily happened to take an umbrella with you and didn’t leave it at a wardrobe, you may be denied access and will have to go back to a wardrobe.
That’s why reading and obeying the rules are of great importance, especially during high season.
Visitors to the Catherine Palace must not:
• enter the exhibition rooms with any type of weapons (gas, traumatic, cold steel arms, firearms);
• enter the rooms with sport equipment;
• enter the exhibition rooms in outer clothing or carry it;
• carry umbrellas;
• enter the rooms without special shoe covers;
• bring food, ice cream, water bottles, chewing gum, etc;
• bring animals;
• enter the exhibition rooms being under the influence of alcohol, drugs or other toxic substances;
• smoke;
• use the mobile connection;
• carry hand-luggage with a size exceeding 35cm x 25cm x 15cm;
• touch the museum exhibits;
• sit on the furniture of museum collections;
• cross the fences;
• shoot videos or to take pictures using additional equipment (including selfie sticks) without special permission endorsed by the director of the Tsarskoe Selo State Museum or his deputies and specialists from the public relations department. Permission should be submitted to the expositions department before the shooting.
• bring a baby carriage of any type to the exhibition rooms.
Read also our post about getting to Pushkin.
The best option to book an excursion to the Catherine Palace is through the international online tour aggregator Viator (click below):