Girl tying her scarf

The Alexander Park runs directly to the west of the Catherine Palace, and covers around 200 hectares. It begins with what is left of the New Garden, a square surrounded by the Cross Canal and divided into four smaller squares, each with a complex geometrical lay-out. Constructed in the reign of Elizabeth, the New Garden is now almost completely overgrown, with the most visible remains being Mount Parnassus, a small artificial hill covered in birches, and the Mushroom Bed, a convergence of eight little alleys marked by unusually shaped wrought-iron benches that took the place of a gazebo in the early 19th century.