Private rooms of the Winter Palace
ThomB:
Since I linked to pre- and post- fire plans of the palace, just for comparison here is Rastrelli's original plan…
http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/05/hm5_7_7_0_6.html
Selencia:
Has anyone been to the Winter Palace? In reading about Imperial Russia I often hear about how members of the family did not like living at the Winter Palace for various reasons; and I was just wondering if for the people who have been in there, if you got a sense that it would not be a very nice place to live.
Robert_Hall:
Well, Selenica, I, as well as many others on this forum have, several times.
The private apartments no longer exist as they were, but the place is huge, uncomfortable and cold or overheated.. There were no real outside places to enjoy, The other palaces out side of the city had more than enough of that. It was much like Buckingham Palace- a working office building. Also a target.
After Alexander II died there, from assassination, I think the family generally avoided it other than formal occasions.
Sanochka:
Russian tulipwood jardiniere mounted with ormolu and Sevres porcelain from the White Drawing Room of Empress Alexandra. Recorded in inventories of this room in 1850, 1885, and again in 1889. Photo from Christie's sale, October 21, 2005. (This piece sold for $156,000.)
Russian Art Lover:
Interesting that many of the tsars actually died in the Winter Palace - Alexander II after the bomb attack on the Catherine Canal, Catherine the Great on the toilet seat or in a corridor, whichever version you want to believe.
There were also many unfortunate incidents linked to the place - the bomb attack of 1880, the fire of 1837, Alexander I watching the flood of 1824 from the windows of the Winter Palace, Nicholas I holed up in the Winter Palace on the morning of the Decembrist revolt...
Incidentally, Nicholas I also died in the Winter Palace (18 February 1855). But the modest folding bed on which he died is no longer there - it was moved to the Cottage at Alexandria.
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