Приёмная, или Столовая великих князей в Зимнем дворце (зал № 173)

The State Hermitage continues the series entitled “The Living Quarters in the Winter Palace". The Reception Room or the Dining Room of the Grand Dukes (№ 173). The first floor in the Winter Palace houses a room that previously functioned as the Reception Room or the Dining Room. This room was included in the suite of grand dukes’ private rooms - future Russian emperors Alexander I, Nicholas I and Alexander II. The Dining Room was designed in 1791 by the architect Giacomo Quarenghi for Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich, the future Emperor Alexander I. The Dining Room was furnished in a simple but elegant style. There was nothing out of place in this room, the works of art displayed there were meant to remind the young grand duke of his future service of the country. Wishing to surround her elder grandson, Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich, with objects that would prepare him for the high mission of a future monarch, Empress Catherine II commissioned the Italian artist Giuseppe Cades to do two paintings with didactic episodes from the life of her grandson’s great namesake Alexander the Great. Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich was brought up together with his younger brother Konstantin. Since Konstantin’s private apartments had no Dining Room, both boys had dinner in Alexander’s private quarters. Later on, when heir Alexander Nikolayevich – the future Emperor Alexander II – resided here, the Dining Room became the setting for such an important part of the grand dukes’ training for the future military service as “maneuvers”. A special table was commissioned that could be transformed depending on the course of the game. Today, certain items displayed in the permanent exhibition in this room bring us back to the grand dukes’ childhood and adolescence. For example, one of the cases displays Alexander I’s drum given to him as a present by his Grandmother, Empress Catherine II. Having grown up, Alexander moved into another suite of rooms in the Winter Palace, while his younger brother, Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich - the future Emperor Nicholas I - was lodged in Alexander’s former living quarters. By that time the living quarters of the grand ducal suite of rooms had received the status of memorial rooms and were later kept intact. The décor of the room is presented in the restrained moderately blue colour scheme. Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich recollected that in his childhood this room had been only furnished with antique gilded chairs, with two huge stoves standing in two corners. Afterwards these stoves were mentioned in the correspondence between Nicholas I and his elder son, heir Alexander Nikolayevich, to whom he gave an account of the reconstruction work in the living rooms after the terrible fire of 1837 destroyed the interior decoration of the Winter Palace.