Gatchina has a palace that most visitors head for first, but the building that makes riders and architects alike stop and stare is the little Priory Palace standing on the shore of Black Lake in Prioratsky Park. It looks like a small Gothic castle with a tower and a chapel, pale and slightly unreal against the water, and it is built of rammed earth. Nikolai Lvov, the architect and polymath, put it up around 1799 for Emperor Paul I, who had made himself Grand Master of the Knights of Malta and wanted a residence to offer the Order. The earth walls, compacted in layers and then plastered, have now survived more than two centuries of Russian winters, which is a better record than plenty of brick.
The park around it is wilder than the formal gardens of the Great Palace, with lakes, wooded islands and paths that wander off into marsh and birch. Gatchina itself, about forty kilometres south of St Petersburg, was Paul's favourite residence before he became emperor, a place where he drilled his troops in Prussian style and built himself a private world away from his mother Catherine's court. The town suffered badly under German occupation in the Second World War, and much of what you see has been painstakingly restored.
Getting here is easy, which is both the blessing and the curse. The main roads out of the city are busy and straight, with heavy trucks and impatient drivers, so the pleasure lies in the side routes. The Gostilitsy road heads northwest across the low Izhora Upland through forest and farmland, with gentle rises, the occasional long bend and villages strung along the way. Expect patchy asphalt, sudden potholes and the odd unmarked level crossing, and treat any wet surface in spring with care. Early mornings at weekends are calmer, and the late light of June turns the lakes to silver.
As a stop, it works very well. Gatchina is a proper town of nearly ninety thousand people, so fuel, cafés, pharmacies and supermarkets are all a few minutes away, and there is parking near the park entrances. Walk the short loop around Black Lake, look closely at the walls of the priory where the plaster has been cut back to show the earth beneath, and then decide whether you have time for the Great Palace as well. You probably do not, and that is fine.