"Built and named for the , Pavlovsk began as a convenient way of getting the then Grand Duke out of his mother's sight. was anything but fond of her only legitimate son, and getting him out from underfoot was well worth the price of a palace, so, in 1777, she gave him a large estate 17 miles south of and three miles from the royal resort of , and four years later building on the house was begun. As it turned out, however, the person who supervised every detail of the construction and the decoration was Paul's wife, the Grand Duchess, and later Empress, . This civilized and artistically inclined German-Alsatian princess knew just what she was doing. The house was finished in 1796 and modified somewhat after a fire in 1803; as it stood at the time of her death in 1828, it was probably the finest (and certainly the most complete) palace in Europe."