When I was at Gatchina just before Dagmar's reburial, the palace guide who took me and my private guide around pointed out where Alexander III's dog Kamchatka is buried in the garden near the Arsenal wing. Alexander III's favorite dog was killed in the train crash at Borki, and was brought home to be buried in the garden close to the family's private quarters.
She also took us to the chapel, which is still scarred and gutted, but now returned to being used as a church. There is a huge icon of Nicholas and his family at the center of the chapel. The chapel is round, located over the kitchen, and reached by a broad shallow iron staircase that winds around the outiside of the chapel walls.Despite being so destroyed, the chapel has a great feeling of peace and has something very touching about it that is lost when things are restored within in inch of their life. Someday the chapel will be restored as perfectly as the chapel at Pavlovsk now is, but it won't have the character it currently has---nor the tremendous sense of history. All I could think of while there was that the same paint on the walls was there when the IF celebrated Christmas Eve or other family celebrations.
The day after my visit there was the Feast Day of the Birthday of the Virgin. The first big liturgy since the Revolution was to be celebrated there, and the guide was obviously pleased it was happening. I gave her a hug and also some money to buy flowers for the service there the next day.
