Gatchina

Gatchina is a town in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, the administrative center of Gatchinsky District, about 45 kilometers south-southwest of Saint Petersburg. First documented in 1499 as Khotchino, it was granted town status in 1796 and was renamed Trotsk from 1923 to 1929 and Krasnogvardeysk from 1929 to 1944, and occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944 under the name Lindemannstadt. It is best known as the site of the Great Gatchina Palace, a former imperial residence whose palace and historic center form part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site designated in 1990 as part of the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments; a 2025 estimate put its population at 91,514, the largest town in Leningrad Oblast, and it hosts the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute.