The Life of Empress Alexandra: Alexandra's bedroom

Sources for most information and photos:

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/bedroom.html

https://thealexanderpalace.fandom.com/wiki/The_Imperial_Bed-Chamber

https://tsarnicholas.org/2019/03/09/furniture-for-interiors-of-the-alexander-palace-to-be-recreated/

http://www.frozentears.org/Pages/Romanovy-Screen.html

http://geglov2.narod.ru/Foto/Aleks_p/Aleks_p_f_002_02.htm

https://vk.com/stavros_spb

https://tsarnicholas.org/2019/09/26/new-photos-reveal-progress-of-the-reconstruction-of-historic-interiors-in-the-alexander-palace/

https://kdflora.tumblr.com/post/187329815063/there-is-some-reconstruction-happening-at-the

https://www.spb.kp.ru/daily/27046/4111992/

https://cinema.rin.ru/novosti/100187/Komnaty_Nikolaja_II_i_Aleksandry_Fedorovny_v_Aleksandrovskom_dvorce_otkrojut_dlja_posetitelej_v_2020_go.html

https://www.fontanka.ru/2019/10/25/098//

The Imperial bedroom was the most private and intimate room in the Alexander Palace, and it could only be entered by passing through the Pallisander Room and the Mauve Boudoir.

When Alexandra first saw the bedroom, it had been untouched for more than 20 years. When the occupants were away, the palace's rooms were locked with the furniture in canvas covers and the paintings covered in sheets. Little things were put away in drawers or put in storage, and sometimes the windows were covered with heavy shutters. Servants were assigned to dust and clean the rooms every now and then, but the rooms usually remained locked, with the key entrusted to the palace marshal.

It turned out that the bedroom and the Mauve Boudoir had connections to Alexandra's family: her late mother Alice had once stayed in these rooms years earlier when she attended the wedding of her brother. The room had been part of a honeymoon suite that Tsar Alexander II had established for his daughter Maria when she married Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.

After seeing the bedroom and discussing it with Nicholas and the decorator Meltzer, Alexandra decided that it would largely be left as it was. She liked the room, and it didn't make sense to her to waste time and money on a complete redecoration when most of the furniture would still be fine. The 1870s furniture remained in use, although it was painted with white enamel to lighten it. A great columned arcade, which traversed the room from one side to the other, was also painted white, while the fabrics and floor coverings were changed.

Alexandra chose a shiny English chintz print made by the Charles Hindley firm for the walls, upholstery and curtains. The pattern was of pink ribbons entwined with green wreaths in a trellis pattern set with flowers on a white background. Kuchumov, the former director of the palace museum, said that the fabric gave the room a funereal feel, with the beds like a bier in front of the icon wall; and some found the pattern dizzying and even painful to look at. This was not Alexandra's intention. To her, the room had the look of an English garden or a tent decorated for a June wedding.

Curtains for the room were hung over two large windows, and matching drapes were hung between the columns of the arcade. Heavy cords with elaborate tassels were used to open and close the curtains. The back wall of the arcade was hung with a light pink material pleated with a top drape and matched the lining of the inside of the arcade curtains.

The Imperial bed was made up of two gilt bronze twin beds which were pushed together to make one large double bed. The top mattress was covered in deerskin. Alexandra's sheets were made of linen and cotton and marked with her Imperial monogram and a marking showing that they belonged to her bedroom in the Alexander Palace. During the day the bed was draped in elaborate coverings of silk, lace and crochet piled with large pillows. At night they were made up with soft blankets and favourite pillows.

The bed faced the windows. Behind it on the arcade wall were literally hundreds of icons and other religious items that were hung on cords. Many of these icons were ancient and valuable, and they were 700 strong (in the early museum years; the number of icons in the bedroom was greatly increased after 1917 to make Alexandra look like a religious fanatic). The main one was a large icon of the Feodorovsky Mother of God, an ancient copy of the icon used to bless the first Romanov tsar when he took the throne. Other icons were encased in silver covers (okladi) and covered in enamel and jewels; some were products of the workshops of famed jeweller, Fabergé and the famous Moscow silversmiths Khlebnikov and Ovchinnikov.

Many of the icons were gifts to the Imperial Family from important monasteries, churches and religious organisations from all around Russia and even from abroad. The backs of many of the icons were inscribed with the subject matter, the giver and the date.

To the right of the bed Alexandra had a small personal prayer chapel with a Bible and icons set into the corner. A votive light was kept burning here. In this chapel the Empress would spend hours praying for the health of her hemophiliac son Alexei and for the protection of her husband. She kept her candles and other religious supplies in cabinets in the chapel. Priests would come to the chapel to hear the confession of Nicholas, Alexandra and their children in the bedroom.

On the left side of the bed, in the corner behind curtains were installed a water closet made of wood with a porcelain bowl and wash stand. They were fully plumbed. These were kept covered and were seldom used, the Empress had a separate bathroom installed in the next room, which was more convenient.

Alexandra frequently had trouble sleeping and stayed up on most nights, likely due to her chronic anxiety. During the night she would nibble on fruit and crackers which were set out for her every night on a side table. She and her husband were awakened each morning by a servant at the door to the Mauve Boudoir; on the other side a lackey would pound on the door with a silver mallet three times. Nicholas was often up long before this, putting on his robe and crossing the corridor to his bathroom and dressing room. Alexandra was frequently late to get out of bed. When she got up, her ill health often meant that she went no further than the sofa in front of the bed.

On the right wall of the room Alexandra had a collection of things she had brought back from a trip she had taken to Italy with her brother Ernst before her marriage. She had a vitrine near the two windows of the bedroom, which contained many of her Fabergé pieces, including some of the famous Easter eggs. Alongside was another cabinet containing gifts from her children.

Two icon lamps in the shape of doves were always lit with rose oil until 1917. The smell stuck around, permeating the furniture and everything in the room, and even 20 years later, visitors said that the bedroom still smelled strongly of the rose oil.

Some photos taken in the bedroom:

Photos of the bedroom itself:

In 1917, after Alexandra and her family were sent into exile from the Alexander Palace, some autochrome (early colour) photographs were taken of the interiors, including the bedroom.

The palace functioned as a museum until World War Two. After the war, Josef Stalin ordered that the interiors be destroyed, and the bedroom was not spared. From then on the Alexander Palace was used as a generic Russian museum and then as a naval training base.

In 1991, the Soviet Union fell, and as the decade wore on, the Alexander Palace was a museum again. In 2000, the bedroom was (a bit inaccurately) reconstructed for a film, Romanovs: An Imperial Family, directed by Gleb Panfilov.

However, the interior was not fully kept, and the bedroom and surrounding rooms looked like something out of an antique store because there was not yet enough funding to enable the interiors to be fully and accurately reconstructed.

In 2015, the Alexander Palace was closed to the public for restoration. The proper funds had finally been allocated, and the plan is to return the room as accurately as possible and in as exact detail as possible to how they looked when the Romanovs were there. The firms entrusted with this important and beautiful work are Stavros, ArtCorpus and Studio44, and they share progress photos on social media.