Pavlovsk Park, Historical park in Pavlovsk, Russia

Pavlovsk Park covers about 600 hectares in the Slavyanka River valley and is divided into seven landscape areas, among them the Palace area, the Slavyanka valley, the Big Star with its chain of ponds, Old Sylvia and New Sylvia. Charles Cameron laid out the Triple Linden Alley of five rows of lindens imported from Lübeck, running from the palace courtyard to a semicircular clearing that served as a parade ground for Paul I's guards.

The park was granted to Paul I by Catherine II in 1777 and then developed as a noble estate. Famous architects worked on creating a palace and gardens following European models.

Maria Feodorovna shaped the early park as a garden of personal memories, reproducing features from her childhood park at Montbéliard: a hermit's hut, a shepherd's hut, a dairy and a farm. Her handbook was Jacques Delille's poem "Les Jardins". She also grew apricots, cherries, peaches, grapes and pineapples in her orangery and greenhouses, and imported hyacinths, tulips and daffodils from Holland for the flower garden behind the palace.

The park covers about 600 hectares across seven landscape areas, so plan which sections to visit rather than trying to cross it all. The Slavyanka's winding channel and hilly banks make the valley paths uneven in places. The Triple Linden Alley runs in a straight axis from the palace courtyard to a semicircular clearing in the forest, useful as an orientation line.

Cameron's thatched dairy, modelled on one in Maria Feodorovna's childhood park at Württemberg, had stalls for several cows; opposite it stood an aviary of parakeets, nightingales, starlings and quail. The same grounds held a labyrinth and tombstones brought from Italy.