Designed by the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi and completed in 1796, Alexander Palace housed three generations of Russian monarchs before it was abandoned by the royal family in the months preceding the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The palace is located in Tsarskoe Selo, a 1500-acre imperial estate near St. Petersburg. (...)
Designed by the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi and completed in 1796, Alexander Palace housed three generations of Russian monarchs before it was abandoned by the royal family in the months preceding the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The palace is located in Tsarskoe Selo, a 1500-acre imperial estate near St. Petersburg. It was built on the order of Catherine the Great as a gift to her grandson Alexander I, to celebrate his wedding to Elizabeth of Baden in 1793. The building was later used as a summer residence by Alexander’s brother, Nicolas I, and then by Alexander’s nephew Nicolas II when he became tsar in 1894. In 1917, the royal family was expelled from the palace by order of Alexander Kerensky, head of the provisional government. Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolshevik regime one year later. From then until World War II the palace remained uninhabited; it functioned as a museum until German forces converted the building into their military headquarters for the duration of their occupation. Later, Alexander Palace served as a naval command base and research station, until the mid-1990s when WMF assisted with efforts to convert the palace into a museum.
