Palace of Tsar Alexei

As you will know New Year is the big winter celebration and Moscow dresses up for the occasion. Sadly I haven't had my camera with me to take photos of the decorations, but this year I have managed to catch a couple. This water fountain on a square near church is turned off but the lights make it look like water. The trees nearly have been festooned with lights. The decorations are slowly coming down but despite it being a months since new year and over three weeks since Orthodox Christmas there are still lots of decorations up which look slightly out of place now.

Peter and I finally got out for a few hours yesterday and went back to Kolonenskoye to visit the inside of the reconstructed Tsar Alexander's palace. This is a complete fake made in the last ten years in a different place from the original, but still interesting for all that. It is not unlike the Boyar's house in style but just much bigger, but not huge like castles in England.

As at Hampton Court there were different rooms for different sections of society, with only the most trusted allowed near the Tsar's private chambers. There were three sets of rooms. the Tsar's the Tsarina's and the rooms for the Tsarovich (the sons). We started at the door to the Tsar's appartments.

The servery where the food was received from the different kitchens

Where the food arrived

Coloured windows

Door to the dining room

Tiled stove for heating the room

Ceiling

The Tsar's place

Tables and benches for everyone else

On the other side of the entrance was the receiving room for members of the Duma where much business was conducted. This is the throne. Notice there are icons in every room.

Entrance to throne room

Throne

Ceiling

Copy of a treaty

The study was one of the Tsar's private rooms. Just as in the Boyar's house the walls are decorated in embossed leather.

The royal bed sat in spendid isolation in a small room.

The iconostasis for the Tsar's private prayers. As there is no altar divine worship had to be undertaken in one of the churches on the site.

Part of the Tsarovich's rooms

Bathhouse

Heating stones to heat the water

Stones in the tub

Another beautiful door

Tsarina's throne - again an icon is placed over it

More noticable in the Boyar's house, the Red or Beautiful corner with an icon and lamp. We saw similar in poor houses when we went to Yaroslavl and the museum of old houses.

Even royalty did handicrafts. It was an important part of a girl's education.

The chair from where the girls were supervised

The Tsar worshipped alone, the ladies shared a chapel

A sumptious room for the ladies

The floor

A delicate coloured light

A ceiling

Through the window to snow on the roof.

Though a complete fake, having been to the Boyar's house in the autumn it is an interesting reconstruction. After Tsar Alexei died his son, Peter 1 who became Peter the Great,  was crowned Tsar but his half sis ter Sofia was regent. Needless to say, she was reluctant to hand power to her brother and was imprisoned in the Novodevichy convent in Moscow.