Description of the attraction
Orlova Roshcha is a monument of forest park art, located in the northeast of Gatchina, and is adjacent to the Menagerie Park. The planning structure of the Orlovaya Roshcha is a fairly frequent network of glades, which are crossed diagonally by a winding road (in the past, it went to the Hunting Castle).
The grove was named after the former owner of the Gatchina estate, Count Grigory Orlov, a favorite of Empress Catherine II. The grove was created for hunting purposes. Count Orlov himself did not live here permanently, but he liked to come here to hunt in the surrounding forests rich in game.
When Pavel Petrovich Orlov owned the estate, the grove became one of the parts of the Gatchina park ensemble and organically fit into the landscape landscape. In the Pavlovian period, in the north of the Eagle Grove, the Hunting Castle was located, built according to the project of A. Rinaldi. The Hunting Castle, or as it was later called the Hunting House, stood in this place until the middle of the 19th century, when Orlova Roshcha was transferred to the Krasnoselsky appanage department and was named Orlovskaya Lesnaya Dacha. By decree of Nicholas I in 1850, the dilapidated wooden Hunting House was dismantled. And the materials were used for the construction of a guard post at the new Gatchina cemetery.
On the plan of Gatchina, made in 1881, on the site of the Hunting House in Orlovaya Roshcha, the Forest Watchman's House is marked, as well as a tree nursery and a pond nearby. The border between the Orlovaya Roshcha and the Menagerie Park used to be the Vayalovskaya road. On the maps of the second half of the 19th century. it is designated as the road to the mill. Now at this place is the highway Gatchina - Taitsy. The Vayalovskie Gate, which got its name from the village of Vayalovo, which still exists today, served as the main entrance to Orlova Grove. Quite wide glades led from the gate to the Hunting House. In its original form, Orlova Grove was preserved until the beginning of the 20th century.
The townspeople loved this natural corner of Gatchina very much. Here they picked berries and mushrooms, just walked or fish on the Trout Canal (it was destroyed during the Soviet era). Poets and artists glorified Orlov Grove in their works. She is also mentioned in the story of A. I. Kuprin. "Dome of St. Isaac of Dalmatia" in connection with the events of 1919, when White troops retreated from Gatchina through this grove.
Located next to the Gatchina microdistrict, Khokhlovo Pole, even today, Orlova Roshcha remains the favorite resting place of the townspeople.
In 1955, construction of the St. Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics began in Orlovaya Roshcha. Today it is one of the largest Russian scientific institutes in Russia; it conducts numerous research in the field of high energy and elementary particle physics, nuclear physics, radiation and biophysics. There are such experimental facilities as the proton accelerator and the VVR-M reactor.
