Johanna, thanks for the link to the Yusupov Palace Moorish Room photos. They bring back fond memories of my visit to the Palace. This room was done in the Moorish style, much in vogue at the time. Almost all palaces and mansions in St. Petersburg had a room done in the same style (either smoking rooms, boudoirs, studys or bathrooms) : I have seen a few of them. Some others have been destroyed, such as the wife of Nicholas I’s Bathroom in the Winter Palace and, of course, Nicholas II’s Bathroom at the AP.
Adding to what Mike wrote, the room was designed by Ipolit Monighetti in the 1860s (and apparently later modified by architect Nicholas Stepanov in the 1890s). According to Felix Yusupov’s memoirs, the Moorish Room, located next to his father’s Study, was an exact replica of a room of the Alhambra Palace in Spain. As Greg King wrote (in his biography of Felix) : « Divans and tables of sandalwood, along with plush pillows and water pipes, lay scattered across the inlaid marble and mosaic floor. (…) In the center of the room stood an onyx fountain which eight jets of water played at the touch of a switch. Around the cornice of the room, carved into marble and onyx panels, were inscriptions from the Koran ». With all the furnishings it must have looked quite exotic! But not entirely inappropriate, as the Yusupov ancesters were Muslim and – as Felix recalls in his memoirs – even claimed to be direct descendants of Prophet Mohammed’s nephew Ali… no less!
But when I saw the room, I didn’t think about them, but rather about their last male descendant, Felix, who apparently had a lot of fun in this room! In his memoirs he writes he liked this room a lot and that, when his father was away, he gathered all their Oriental looking servants there and, dressed up in some fancy costume, he played the role of an Oriental despot, surrounded by his slave servants
. Alas, one day, as Greg King wrote (quoting him again here, which will spare me of having to translate Felix’s own recollections) : « Felix’s father burst into the Moorish Room at the Moika Palace only to find his son standing before the fountain dressed in a makeshift sultan costume and wearing his mother’s jewels, a half-naked Arab servant lying prone at his feet while the boy brandished a long ceremonial dagger
. » Felix adds that his father, failing to recognize his talent for theatrics, made a terrible scene
and ordered the whole group to get the hell out of there! Which prompted the sultan and his court to flee in a panic. It was the last the Moorish Room would see of Felix’s antics as his father barred him from coming back!
