Gachina Palace which lies just south of St. Petersburg was constructed in 1766 as a gift from Catherine the Great to her court favorite, Count Grigori Orlov. Designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi, the palace was a hunting retreat for the Count and the Tsarina set within an extensive landscape executed in the most modern a l'anglaise taste (see N. Tretyakov, Imperial Palaces in the Vicinity of Saint Petersburg, 1992, pp. 7-16).