Maple Drawing Room Alexander Palace Floor Plan

The Palisander Cartoon Room.

The Alexander (Alexandrovsky) Palace - generally considered the favorite abode of the last Imperial family unit of Russia, and where they spent the offset v months of their captivity after the start of the Revolution - was commissioned by Catherine the Great for her favorite grandson, the future Alexander I, on the occasion of his marriage. Information technology was built to the blueprint of Giacomo Quarenghi and synthetic between 1792 and 1796. After his accretion in 1801, Alexander chose to reside in the nearby, larger Catherine Palace and gave the Alexander Palace to his brother, the futurity Nicholas I, for summertime usage. From that time it was the summer residence of the heir to the throne; even later on coming to the throne, Nicholas I was very attached to the building, though his successors less and so. Several members of the family would die while in residence, and the futurity Nicholas Ii was born there in 1868.

Some other view of the Palisander Drawing Room.

The Majestic bedroom.

Another view of the Imperial bedchamber.

It was Nicholas and his wife, the Empress Alexandra, who would make the biggest touch on the palace, and the home life they established there has become an enduring part of their legend. With a growing, shut-knit family, the Empress devoted much energy to the redecoration of the private rooms. Designed in a mix of late Victorian, Art Nouveau, and an Edwardian neoclassicism, the rooms were always filled with flowers, the tables and shelves laden with art objects and framed photographs. Though the renovations would be much criticized past the Empress' detractors for being middle grade and insufficiently "Imperial", the rooms every bit they were then had a feminine charm and, about chiefly for her and her family, were pretty, cozy, and applied.

The Mauve Report, aka "the Mauve Boudoir", "the Lilac Study".

Another view of the Mauve Study. Although these rooms still seem quite total by modern standards, many items accept already been removed.

The Maple Cartoon Room.

Another view of the Maple Drawing Room. The plants have withal to be removed from the room.

Soon after the Royal family was transported to Siberia in August of 1917 the palace was turned into a museum; information technology continued as such until the get-go of the Second World War. Tsarskoe Selo was occupied during the state of war, and the palace was used as headquarters for the German military command. In the German's retreat, when so many other Imperial residences were burned - including the side by side Catherine Palace - the Alexander Palace, though looted and heavily damaged, was spared destruction. The real destruction came later on the war, when most of the celebrated interiors vanished, the rooms altered to make up plainly exhibition halls for a proposed museum to Pushkin. When that programme came to nothing, the building was turned over to the use of the Soviet Navy. At the end of the twentieth century, with Perestroika, the autumn of the Soviet Empire, and an increasing interest in Russia's last Imperial family, the Navy was finally induced to vacate. A museum dedicated to the family unit was before long instituted and important restoration work began immediately - the structure was in a precarious state - and continues to this day. In 2015 the museum was closed to the public for a major renovation, a multi-twelvemonth project to include, amidst other things, the recreation of the individual rooms of the Nicholas and Alexandra.

The Empress' Formal Reception Room.
The big portrait at centre is a tapestry copy of Vigée Lebrun's celebrated group of Marie Antoinette and her children, a gift
from the French authorities. Rather an unfortunate option, considering the similarly unpleasant fate of the two women....

The Small Library/Dining Room. (I believe this image has been reversed.)

The Portrait Hall.

The Marble/Billiard Hall.

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A series of Autochromes, 140 in full, were made in 1917 past the military photographer Andrei Zeest, who had been commissioned past the fine art historian George Loukomski, Caput of the Tsarskoe Selo Inventory Commission. The views of the Catherine Palace were taken in June-July of 1917, and the Alexander Palace interiors were photographed in August-September, soon later on the Tsar's family was sent into exile. Now that a comprehensive restoration of the palace is under style, the detail-rich Autochromes take become one of the well-nigh of import resources for the museum workers, restorers, and historians. The larger number of the Autochrome plates were taken out of Russian federation when Loukomski emigrated in 1918. About forty Autochromes featuring the palaces were added to the Tsarskoe Selo collection in the 1960s, received from Andrei Zeest's widow.

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