Two imperial palaces lie at either end of this road, and between them the flat country south of Saint Petersburg still carries the scars of the twentieth century's worst siege. At the northern end is Pushkin, the former Tsarskoye Selo, where the Catherine Palace stretches its blue and white façade for hundreds of metres and the reconstructed Amber Room glows inside. At the southern end is Gatchina, Paul I's palace, grey and fortress-like, in a park of lakes and islands. The historic road between them is one of the many components of the World Heritage Site of the historic centre of Saint Petersburg and its related monuments.
From September 1941 the German siege ring around Leningrad ran through these southern suburbs. Pushkin and Gatchina were occupied, the palaces looted and burned, and the Amber Room carried off, never to be found. The defenders' lines are marked today by memorials of the Green Belt of Glory, a chain of monuments along the former front, and the rides that pass here link several of them. Standing among birch trees beside a memorial, with traffic hissing past, it is hard to imagine nearly nine hundred days of hunger and shelling, but the names and dates make you try.
The road itself is a modern highway, flat and fairly straight, crossing fields, woods and the edges of towns like Kommunar, an industrial town on the Izhora. It is busy, with commuter and truck traffic and some fast, impatient driving, and the surface varies from new asphalt to tired patchwork. In autumn the birch woods turn bright yellow, and in winter the whole country is white and the roads are icy for months.
Western riders face a different obstacle first: since 2022 sanctions, visa and insurance problems have made Russia extremely hard to visit, and many governments advise against travel, so check before you plan.
Kommunar, eight kilometres away, has fuel and shops, and both palace towns have plenty of cafés. Give yourself time at Gatchina in particular; its park is far less crowded than Pushkin's, and its lakes, bridges and grottoes are a quiet place to think about everything this road has seen.