Photo: Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna and Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark on their wedding day, taken in the Portrait Hall of the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. Credit: Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve

Tsarskoye Selo will host a new exhibition to be held June 15 to September 30, 2013, at the Upper Bathhouse of the Catherine Park in cooperation with the ROSPHOTO State Museum & Exhibition Centre. The new exhibit tells how photography came to Tsarskoye Selo, how the tsar’s court influenced a fashion for photographing, and how the Romanov family helped boost the quality of daguerreotypes and photographs in Russia.

After the first pewter-plate photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 and then his partner Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented a photographic process using silver on a copper plate in 1839, the daguerreotype came to Russia under Tsar Nicholas I and was called “writing with light”.

Photography became a favourite hobby of the Tsar’s family which, like any other, loved its life chronicled in pictures. The photographs of the “most august family” used for the press and postcards were taken by professionals, who could be entitled a “court supplier and photographer” after 8–10 years of flawless service.

During Alexander III’s reign, photography bloomed and competed with portrait painting. Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their children, Dowager Empress Maria Fiodorovna and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich took photography lessons from professional “light-writers”. Particularly noteworthy on the current display are a touching photograph of little Tsarevich Alexei standing together with a guard near a snow-covered Alexander Palace and an album of photographs by Anna Vyrubova, Tsarina Alexandra’s lady-in-waiting and close friend.

In 1860 the architect Ippolito Monighetti built an addition to the Llama Pavilion in the Alexander Park, which was used by the Romanovs as a photographic studio and laboratory. After the Tsar’s special permission of 1866, photographic ateliers opened in the town of Tsarskoye Selo: Mikhail Kozlovski’s on Konyushennaya St, the workshop of Wilhelm Lapré on Moskovskaya St, and the photographic studio “K.E. von Gann and Co” of Alexander Yagelsky on Shirokaya St.

© Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve. 22 May, 2013

Photo credit: Peterhof State Museum Reserve 

This beautiful paperweight from the Peterhof State Museum Reserve offers a portrait of Grand Duke Alexander Nicholayevich in baptismal clothes. The future Alexander II was born on 29th (O.S. 17th) April 1818 in the Moscow Kremlin. It is interesting to note that Alexander II and Peter I were the only Russian sovereigns native of Moscow. The sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation for the August baby were held in May 1818 at the cathedral at the Chudov Monastery in Moscow. A gala dinner marking this occasion was held by Alexander’s paternal grandmother Empress Maria Feodorovna. The memory of those happy days is preserved in this paperweight. The image of the baby Alexander is set in a gold frame and mounted on a malachite base. The future "Tsar Liberator" is presented as a pretty blue-eyed baby in a bonnet and smock. The object was bequeathed by Maria Feodorovna to her "beloved daughter-in-law Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, the mother of Alexander II. This beautiful family heirloom, a deeply personal item at that, somehow survived all the vicissitudes of history, and survived to this day.

The paperweight is currently on display in the Treasury at Peterhof, along with the carrying basket and baptismal clothes of Alexander II. This unique museum houses new acquisitions including jewellery, costumes (dresses and uniforms), personal items of the Russian emperors and their families, from Peter I to Nicholas II. The treasures in this museum are housed in the former private apartments of Catherine the Great and updated on a regular basis.

© Paul Gilbert @ Royal Russia. 21 May, 2013

Poster announcing this years White Flower Day at Livadia

Livadia Palace, situated near Yalta in the Crimea was the setting for the White Flower Day on Sunday, May 19th. The tradition of this charitable sale originated in the early twentieth century by the last Empress of Russia, Alexandra Feodorona.

Beginning in 1911, the whole community took part including members of the Imperial family and the nobility who were vacationing at their palaces in the region, and the local townsfolk. They flocked in numbers to contribute to the good deeds by buying bouquets of white daisies, paying what they could whether it was a few kopecks or hundreds of rubles. Each donation helped alleviate the suffering of those in need. The grand duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and their little brother Alexis eagerly assisted their mother at the open stalls.

The noble cause was reinstituted in 2005, and has since been held annually on the second Sunday after Easter. The event is held at the Church of the Exaltation at Livadia Palace. Money collected in this year's auction will be spent on new equipment and the training of nurses at a new retirement home to be opened in the territory of the Yalta City Hospital, as well as helping the poor and sick to fight tuberculosis.

The symbol of this holiday is the white daisy, which today is distributed to all who make a donation. The people of Yalta took an active interest in the event, including the local women who donated their baked goods, handicrafts and flowers, while local school children donated their drawings, and handicrafts made of white flowers.

White Flower Day at the Martha Mary Convent in Moscow. Photo credit: Pravmir.ru 

White Flower Day is held in a growing number of cities across Russia, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg.

Following the Romanov 400th Anniversary Commemoration Project at Tsarskoye Selo, May 18th became the day to honour the Last Emperor of Russia.

Nicholas II was born in the Alexander Palace on May 18 (Old Style May 6), 1868.

145 years later, his Working Study was graced with a bouquet in the Russian Style.

The floral composition included cornflowers, bluebells, asters and grasses.

The Sovereign loved Russian nature and enjoyed long strolls in the parks of Tsarskoye Selo, where he and his spouse Alexandra moved two weeks after their wedding in 1894. Nicholas wrote in his journal, "Words cannot describe the bliss of two of us living in such a good place as Tsarskoye!"

© Tsarskoye Selo Palace Museum Preserve. 20th May, 2013

HIH Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and Patriarch Kirill I visiting the Romanov exhibit in Ekaterinburg

The Head of the Russian Imperial House, HIH Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill I, have arrived in Ekaterinburg to take part in the celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, including the 145th anniversary of the birth of Emperor Nicholas II on May 18th, 1868.

The first stop was Ganina Yama where His Holiness laid the first stone for a new church and its consecration. The original wooden Church of the Mother of God was destroyed during a fire in 2010.

This was followed by a litany, and prayer at the cross marking the spot where the bodies of the last tsar, his family and faithful retainers were dumped into the abandoned mineshaft by the Bolsheviks in the early morning hours of July 18th, 1918.

His Holiness said: "During the 300-year-reign of the Romanov dynasty, Russia was a great power stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The country's economic, social and political development were quickly outpacing those of other nations. In modern terms, its GDP was close to the second place in the world."

Patriarch Kirill I consecrates the new Church of the Mother of God at Ganina Yama

On the last tsar, he added: "The Monastery at Ganina Yama is a holy place. It provides an opportunity to remember the spiritual heroism of Nicholas II and his family, who accepted their deaths in gentleness, peace, forgiveness of enemies, in all humility and surrendering to God's hands. It is important that in light of the fact that the gravest crimes were committed on this site, that we erected this monastery."

"Despite the fact that during Soviet times everything connected with the royal family was distorted, despite the ridicule and reproach, like a concrete slab through which grass can not grow, their memory has always been alive in the hearts of people," he said.

Several thousand faithful arrived at Ganina Yama by bus, car and on foot from Ekaterinburg, and other towns in the surrounding region of Sverdlovsk.

The next stop was Ekaterinburg, where the Patriarch and Grand Duchess Maria stopped at the Church on the Blood, built on the site of the former Ipatiev House. Together they visited the nearby Patriarchal Compound where an exhibition featuring rare archival materials related to the House of Romanov is on display. The exhibit also included a collection of watercolours and personal items of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the youngest sister of Nicholas II.

In the evening, His Holiness held a Divine Liturgy at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Ekaterinburg.

© Paul Gilbert @ Royal Russia. 18 May, 2013

© Paul Gilbert @ Royal Russia. 18 May, 2013

© Paul Gilbert @ Royal Russia. 18 May, 2013

A poll conducted by the Levada Center shows that the majority of Russians are confident that Russia does not need a monarchy and Russia's last emperor Nicholas II was not the best leader. The 145th anniversary of the birth of Russia's last Emperor Nicholas II will be marked on May 18th.