The interiors of the Catherine Palace that have been restored after the destruction of the Second World War are linked to the still unrestored areas by the Small Passage Room. This small interior with a single window looking out on the Catherine Park is part of the lost Karelian Reception Room of Alexander I that Vasily Stasov created in 1817.

The present contents of the Small Passage Room consist of works of Russian and Western European applied art of the first quarter of the nineteenth century from the historical collection of the Tsarskoye Selo museum-preserve: a gilded and patinated bronze clock of The Adoration of Homer made by the Parisian craftsmen Pierre Victor Ledure and Louis-Stanislas Lenoir-Ravrio, a bronze bust of Jupiter and also poplar chairs produced by Andrei Tur’s workshop in the 1820s.

Beyond the Small Passage Room lie the former apartments of Alexander I’s mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fiodorovna. The décor created there in 1823–26 to Stasov’s designs perished in a fire during the Second World War and has not yet been recreated. At the preset time these rooms are used to display items from the museum-preserve’s historical collection.