📍Alexander Palace, Pushkin, St Petersburg, Russia
1905 – 1917“I was born at the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, the Tsar's Village south of St Petersburg, and I was attached to it all my life. After the upheavals of 1905 I made it our permanent home, preferring its quiet park and plain rooms to the grandeur of the Winter Palace. Alix and I lived there for twelve years with our four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, and our son Alexei. We kept to ourselves; outsiders said we lived a simple life that shut the world out. We dined in the library, read aloud in the evenings, and I walked, rowed and chopped wood in the park. Alexei's toys and small uniforms filled the children's rooms, and his haemophilia — which we hid from the country — governed our days with fear and hope; when he was unwell we wheeled him round the garden in a little carriage. After I gave up the throne in March 1917, the palace became our prison, and that spring we dug a vegetable garden in the park with our guards watching. In August we were taken to Siberia, and we never came home.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today