In the northern part of the picturesque Alexander Park there is a magnificent building with a two-century history - the New Tsarskoye Selo (later - Alexander) Palace. It was founded in 1792 by order of Catherine II and was built for the marriage of her beloved grandson, Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich (future Emperor Alexander I) with Grand Duchess Elizaveta Alekseevna
If Alexander I preferred to stay at the Great Tsarskoye Selo Palace during his stay in Tsarskoe Selo, then his successor Nicholas I was very fond of the Alexander Palace and paid special attention to its improvement.
For the grandson of Nicholas I, Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Alexander III, the Alexander Palace was the grand ducal residence (his apartments were located in the left wing of the building), however, after becoming emperor, Alexander III gave preference to Gatchina among the summer palaces.
Since 1904, the Alexander Palace became the permanent residence of Emperor Nicholas II, who was born here in 1868 and treated Tsarskoe Selo with special warmth. The last 13 years of the reign of the Russian Emperor passed here; from here on the morning of August 1, 1917, the imperial family was sent into exile in Tobolsk.
In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, chandeliers, carpets, some pieces of furniture, marble and porcelain items of 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, German and Spanish military units were stationed in the Alexander Palace; the square in front of the palace was turned into a Nazi cemetery.
At the end of the war, the palace was mothballed and in 1946 given to the USSR Academy of Sciences to store the collections of the Institute of Russian Literature and to house the exhibition of the All-Union Museum of A. S. Pushkin. In this regard, in 1947-1951, restoration work began in the palace, during which it was planned to restore the surviving interiors of D. Quarenghi and the surviving fragments of decoration, as well as to recreate the interiors of the time of Emperors Nicholas I and Nicholas II. However, during the work, many elements of decoration of the Maple and Rosewood living rooms of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, as well as the Dressing Room (Moorish) of Nicholas II were destroyed. These halls of the palace were restored according to the design of the architect L. M. Bezverkhny (1908-1963) “according to the architectural standards of the period of Quarenghi and Pushkin.”
3 окт 2024
