Tsarskoye Selo (Russian: Ца́рское Село́; "Tsar's Village") is a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located 26 kilometres (16 mi) south from the center of St. Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin and of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.
In the 17th century, the estate belonged to a Swedish noble. Its original Finnish name is usually translated as "a higher gro...
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Tsarskoye Selo (Russian: Ца́рское Село́; "Tsar's Village") is a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located 26 kilometres (16 mi) south from the center of St. Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin and of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.
In the 17th century, the estate belonged to a Swedish noble. Its original Finnish name is usually translated as "a higher ground". Max Vasmer, on the other hand, derives this toponym from the Finnish word for island, "saari". In any case, the Finnish name came to be pronounced by the 18th-century Russians as "Sarskoye Selo", later changed to "Tsarskoye Selo" (i.e., "the royal village").
In 1708, Peter the Great gave the estate to his wife—future Empress Catherine I—as a present. She founded the Blagoveschenskaya (Annunciation) church there in 1724, changing the name of the settlement to Blagoveschenskoye, but this artificial derivation quickly went out of use.
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