Alexander Palace

Catherine II on May 22, 1796 (senior teacher) ordered: “To add a quarter of the bed for the bed; in a flashlight in the bathhouse, remove the glass from the dome; both slopes do not have steps; add color garden and trellis and plant in autumn; insert a mirror into the dressing table in the restroom; arrange a grate on the colonnade; for Shuvalova to make a special staircase to the kindergarten; to fulfill all the orders of the sovereign of the Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich and keep a special account for everything, so that after that he will allocate the required amount for all such work. ” On June 12, 1796, Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich and his wife drove into the New Palace.

The halls of the front suite, lined with white artificial marble, were located on the garden facade of the palace. In the center of the suite there was a hall with a half-tube, divided into three parts by wide arches. The middle part of the room was called the Semicircular Hall, on the east side - the Portrait Hall, which adjoined the Hall with a slide, and on the west - the Billiard Hall (or the Raspberry lounge). The wing on the left side of the palace was occupied by the Corner lounge, connected to the library rooms, the wing on the right side was the palace church . In the left wing of the palace were located the "Concert Hall", directly adjacent to the Corner lounge, and a number of living rooms. Alexander Palace. The historical interiors of the premises on the first floor of the left wing of the palace were originally intended for the imperial retinue. ^[1] .

Emperor Nicholas I also liked to be in the Alexander Palace. Here he was often and for a long time with his family and relatives. It was here that his widow, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna , died. For the grandson of Nicholas I , Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Alexander III , the Alexander Palace was a grand-ducal residence. His apartments were located in the right wing of the palace.

With the accession to the throne of Nicholas II, the Alexander Palace began to be rebuilt. In particular, the perestroika of 1896-1898 destroyed the retinue half: in its place there were personal apartments of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Fedorovna. In the left suite there is the Bedroom, the Lilac office and the Empress's Rosewood drawing room, in the right - the Dining Room (Reception of Nicholas II), the Study, the Emperor’s Closet and other office rooms. In 1903, the J. Quarenghi Concert Hall, which occupied the entire width of the left building, was destroyed. The architect S. Danini proposed several options for adapting the housing for residential and ceremonial chambers for the imperial family. In one of the projects of 1901, he envisaged the preservation of the Concert Hall, however, in the course of work carried out by the firm of F. Meltzer on the projects of R. Meltzer in 1903-1906, the Concert Hall was destroyed, and in its place in the first floor of the left wing of the Alexander Palace appeared The maple lounge of Alexandra Fedorovna and the Front (New) cabinet of Emperor Nicholas II, and in the second - the rooms of the children's half; the corridor separating the personal apartments of the emperor and the empress was extended to the Corner lounge.

After the revolution of 1905 , the Alexander Palace became the main residence of Emperor Nicholas II, who was also born in Tsarskoye Selo. It was in this palace that 12 years of the reign of the last Russian emperor and his entire family passed. Here was the family of the monarch under arrest after the February Revolution. On the morning of August 1 (14), 1917, it was from the Semicircular Hall of this palace that the imperial Romanov family was sent to Siberian exile, from where they were sent to Yekaterinburg , where they were later shot.

In 1918, the Alexander Palace was opened to visitors as a state museum. The exposition included historical interiors on the ground floor in the central part of the building and residential apartments of the Romanov family in the right wing of the palace. In 1918, on the initiative of the People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky , an Orphanage named after Young Communards was created on the basis of the palace. Lunacharsky attracted his wife to his organization, who was allocated a room on the mezzanines of the palace for these purposes. The allegations that she allegedly settled there are unfounded, because according to the testimony of K. Chukovsky, Anna Alexandrovna and her son, upon arrival in Petrograd, settled in the apartment where Lunacharsky himself lived, "in the Army and Navy’s house, in a lousy apartment - obliquely from the house of Muruzi, through a vile staircase ” ^[2]

In the first months of World War II, chandeliers, carpets, some furniture, marble and porcelain from the 18th century were evacuated from the Alexander Palace Museum. The bulk of the palace property was left in the halls.

During the occupation of the city of Pushkin, the German headquarters and the Gestapo were located in the Alexander Palace, in the cellars there was a prison; the square in front of the palace was turned into a cemetery for SS soldiers.

At the end of the war, the palace was mothballed and in 1946 it was given to the USSR Academy of Sciences to store the collections of the Institute of Russian Literature and to host the exposition of the All-Union Museum of A.S. Pushkin . In this connection, restoration work began in the palace in 1947-1951, during which it was planned to restore the preserved interiors of D. Quarenghi and surviving fragments of decoration, as well as recreate the interiors of the time of Emperors Nicholas I and Nicholas II. However, during the work, many elements of the decoration of the Maple and Rosewood living rooms of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, as well as the Lavatory (Moorish) Nicholas II, were destroyed. These halls of the palace were restored according to the project of architect L. M. Bezverkhny (1908-1963) "according to the architectural standards of the Quarenghi and Pushkin period".

In 1951, by a government decree, the Alexander Palace was transferred to the Naval Department, and the palace collection, which was part of the evacuated items in the Central Repository of Museum Funds of the suburban palaces-museums, entered the Pavlovsk Palace Museum. In 1996, a grant from the World Monuments Fund (WMF) was received for the restoration of the Alexander Palace and work began on repairing the roof of the building. A year later, on the initiative of the military institute occupying the palace, in the right wing of the building, where the private apartments of Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna used to be, a permanent exhibition “Memoirs in the Alexander Palace” was created, prepared by the Tsarskoye Selo Museum-Reserve from museum collection items . At this exhibition, in partially preserved historical interiors and halls, which lost their artistic decoration during the war, objects of apartment decoration and personal belongings of the last Russian emperor and his family are presented ^[3] .

In October 2009, according to the order of the Federal Property Management Agency, the palace building was transferred on the right of operational management to the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Reserve . Since that time, large-scale work has begun on the restoration of the facades and interiors of the Alexander Palace.

Restoration work in the palace began in 1951 and continues to this day. By 1997, the left wing of the palace was partially restored and turned into the exposition “Memoirs in the Alexander Palace”, which tells about the life of the last royal family. The entire facade of the palace needs work, it is gradually planned to supplement the exhibition with the right wing, which is still closed.

On June 23, 2010, the grand opening of three ceremonial halls located in the central part of the palace took place: Portrait, Semicircular and Marble. Their restoration was carried out in record time - in just six months. Among other genuine objects, the portrait of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, which was considered lost, was returned to the museum. ^[four]

The official “restoration work project”, implemented since the 2nd half of 2010, led to a rough reconstruction and destruction of the original building structures - brick and stone, which is incompatible with the principles of scientific restoration ^[5] .

The premises of the first floor of the left wing of the palace were originally intended for the imperial retinue; in the 19th century they were used as spare rooms for the temporary stay of the imperial family; Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and his wife Alexandra Iosifovna often lived here. In 1870, the Duke of Edinburgh and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna stayed here.

Currently, out of ten personal interiors of the last crowned owners of the palace, only three rooms have partially preserved the interior decoration and fragmentary recreation ^[6] .

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  The restored interior of the room according to the photograph of the palace of those times (on the wall).

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  Homeliness of the last royal family

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  A bear-skin rug in one of the palace rooms

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  Tapestry depicting Marie Antoinette in one of the halls of the palace

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  Three-grade piano in the front hall of the palace

• Alexander Palace (Faberge Egg)

• Photos and information about the Alexander Palace on the site Pushkin.ru
• Alexander Palace on Rusarh.ru