Alexander Palace

Listen for a moment. Gravel shifts under your shoes, crows call from the old oaks, and somewhere behind you a bicycle bell rings on a park path. In front of you stands a long, pale building, calm and symmetrical. Two rows of white columns run across its face like a line of tall trees. After the gold and blue of the Catherine Palace nearby, this place feels quiet... almost private. That feeling is the key to its whole story.

You are in the town of Pushkin, about twenty-five kilometres south of central Saint Petersburg. For two centuries this town was called Tsarskoye Selo, which means the Tsar's Village. It was the summer world of the Russian court, a place of parks, lakes, pavilions and palaces. The Alexander Palace is the younger and plainer of the two great palaces here. Its plainness was the point.

The palace was a gift from a grandmother. Catherine the Great ordered it in the early 1790s for her favourite grandson, Alexander, the future Emperor Alexander the First. The occasion was his marriage to a young German princess, Louise of Baden, who took the Russian name Elizabeth. Catherine chose the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi. He worked in a strict classical style, inspired by ancient Rome and by the villas of the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Construction finished in the mid-1790s, shortly before Catherine died.

Look again at that double colonnade. The columns are Corinthian, the style with carved leaves at the top. They stand in two rows, so light and shadow fall between them in deep bands. The colonnade links the two forward wings of the building and frames the courtyard. There is little decoration on the walls. Quarenghi let proportion do the work. Many architects still treat this facade as one of the finest classical designs in Russia.

Here is the first surprise. The man who made this palace famous was not the Alexander it was built for. It was the last emperor of Russia, Nicholas the Second. He was born here in 1868. Decades later, after the violent events in the capital in early 1905, he and his wife Alexandra moved here to live all year round. For the next twelve years, this quiet building was the real centre of power in the Russian Empire.

The family chose a modest life, at least by imperial standards. Nicholas and Alexandra filled one wing with rooms that looked more like a wealthy English country house than a palace. There were comfortable sofas, family photographs, chintz fabrics and potted flowers. Alexandra had grown up partly in England with her grandmother, Queen Victoria, and her taste showed it. The five children grew up here, playing in the park and on the frozen ponds.

The most famous room is Alexandra's Mauve Boudoir. She loved the colour mauve, a soft pink-purple, and the room was full of it: the walls, the fabrics, the furniture, even fresh lilacs. Nearby is the Maple Drawing Room, panelled in pale wood, with a small raised gallery reached by a staircase. Inside these rooms the empress received friends and spent long hours with her children. Visitors often say the rooms feel surprisingly human in scale.

The second surprise is darker. In March 1917, after the revolution and the abdication of Nicholas, the family became prisoners in their own home. Soldiers guarded the doors. The former emperor shovelled snow and worked in the garden while curious crowds watched through the fences. In August of that year the family was sent east to Siberia. They never returned. Within a year, all of them were killed in the city of Yekaterinburg.

After the revolution, the new government opened the palace as a museum. Visitors could walk through the private rooms almost as the family had left them. Then came the Second World War. German forces occupied Pushkin, and the palace became a military headquarters. Soldiers used the grounds near the building as a cemetery. Before the occupation, museum staff managed to evacuate part of the collection, but much was lost or damaged in the fighting and the years that followed.

After the war, the palace did not return to the public for a long time. For decades it was used by the Soviet navy, and most of the interiors disappeared under offices and storage. Only in this century did a full restoration begin. Craftspeople rebuilt the lost rooms using old photographs, inventories and surviving pieces. The main historic interiors reopened to visitors in 2021. So when you walk inside, you see both survivors and careful reconstructions side by side.

Take a few minutes for the park around you. This is Alexander Park, larger and wilder than the formal gardens of the Catherine Palace. Paths wind past ponds, bridges and small buildings. There is a Chinese-style village, built in the eighteenth century when European courts loved imagined images of China. There is also a small island where the imperial children had their own little house. The park is a good place to slow down after the palace rooms.

Notice how the two palaces speak different languages of power. The Catherine Palace shouts with gold, colour and length. The Alexander Palace stays calm and restrained. One was built to impress a whole court. The other became a family home, and then a family prison. Many people visit only the famous golden palace and miss this one. Those who come here often remember it longer, because the story is so personal.

Before you leave, stand still in the courtyard for one more minute. Look at the shadows moving between the columns. Picture a man in a soldier's coat walking slowly across this gravel, with guards at the gate and his children at the windows. Then listen again to the crows, the bicycles, the voices on the paths. The empire is gone. The palace remains... quiet, pale and patient, waiting for the next person to stop and look.