Livadia Palace

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Livadia Palace

Livadia Palace ( ) was a summer retreat of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and his family in Livadiya

Livadiya

Livadiya is small town in Crimea, Ukraine west of Yalta. A minor Crimean Tatar settlement in Middle Ages, Livadiya was named after the ancient Greek entrance into paradise in 1835, when a notable landscape park was laid out here....
, Crimea

Crimea

Crimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name....
in southern Ukraine

Ukraine

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Livadia Palace ( ) was a summer retreat of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and his family in Livadiya

Livadiya

Crimea

Crimea or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea is an autonomous republic of Ukraine located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name....
in southern Ukraine

Ukraine

Yalta Conference

The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and Code name the Argonaut Conference, was the wartime meeting from 4 February 1945 to 11 February 1945 among the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union?President of the United States Franklin D....
was held there in 1945, when the palace housed the apartments of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other members of the American delegation. Today the palace houses a museum, but it is sometimes used by the Ukrainian authorities for international summits.

Construction history

Formerly a possession of the Potocki

Potocki

File:????? ?????? ????????.jpgPotocki is the surname of a Poland szlachta family....
family, Livadia became a summer residence of the Russian imperial family in the 1860s, when architect Ippolito Monighetti built a large palace, a small palace, and a church there. The residence was frequented by Alexander II of Russia

Alexander II of Russia

Alexander II Nikolaevich , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the List of Russian rulers of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881....
, while his successor Alexander III

Alexander III of Russia

Alexander III Alexandrovich , also known as Alexander the Peacemaker reigned as Tsar of Russia from 13 March 1881 until his death in 1894....
died in the smaller palace. It was perhaps disagreeable associations with the latter circumstance that induced his son Nicholas to have both palaces torn down and replaced with a larger structure.

In 1909, Nicholas and his wife travelled to Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
, where they were captivated by Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
palaces shown to them by Victor Emmanuel III. Upon their return, they engaged Nikolay Krasnov

Nikolay Krasnov

Nikolay Ivanovich Krasnov was a Russian major-general.Nikolay Krasnov was born in the stanitsa Veshenskaya of the Don Voisko Province into the family of the Ataman of Don Cossack Voisko, lieutenant-general Ivan Krasnov ....
, Yalta

Yalta

Yalta is a city in Crimea, southern Ukraine, on the north coast of the Black Sea.The city is located on the site of an ancient Greece colony, said to have been founded by Greek sailors who were looking for a safe shore on which to land....
's most fashionable architect, responsible for the grand ducal residences in Koreiz

Koreiz

Koreiz is a townlet in the Yalta municipality of Crimea. The name of the town means "villages" in Greek language. The nearby spa of Miskhor was absorbed into Koreiz in 1958....
, to prepare plans for a brand new imperial palace. The tsar's diary testifies that the design was much discussed in the imperial family; it was decided that all four facades of the palace should look different. Construction works lasted for seventeen months; the new palace was inaugurated on 11 September, 1911. Grand Duchess Olga

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia was the eldest daughter of the last autocracy ruler of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II of Russia, and of Alexandra Fyodorovna ....
celebrated her 16th birthday that November at Livadia.

The palace was once used as a mental institution, and now serves as a museum on the territory of Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south....
. Most of the historical artifacts have been lost, but anything that has been recovered can be seen for a small fee. In August 2007 the palace was recognized as a landmark of a modern history by the Seven Wonders of Ukraine

Seven Wonders of Ukraine

The Seven Wonders of Ukraine are the seven historical and cultural monuments of Ukraine, which were chosen in the Seven Wonders of Ukraine contest held in July, 2007....
project.

Architecture

The Livadia Palace is built of white Crimean granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of Intrusion , felsic, igneous rock rock . Granite has a medium to coarse texture, occasionally with some individual crystals larger than the groundmass forming a rock known as Porphyry ....
in the Neo-Renaissance

Neo-Renaissance

"Neo-Renaissance" is an all-encompassing style designation that covers many aspects of 19th century Revivalism which were neither Grecian nor Gothic but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range of classicizing Italian modes....
style. The edifice features an arched portico of Carrara

Carrara

Carrara is a city in the province of Massa-Carrara , famous for the white or blue-gray marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione river, some 100 km west-northwest of Florence....
marble, a spatious Arabic patio

Patio

A patio is an outdoor space generally used for meal or recreation that often adjoins a House and is typically Pavement . It may refer to a roofless inner courtyard of the sort found in Spain-style dwellings or a paved area between a residence and the garden....
, a Florentine tower, ornate Bramantesque windows, a "balcony-belvedere", and multiple bays with jasper vases. A gallery connects the palace with a neo-Byzantine church of the Exaltation of the Cross, built by Monighetti in 1866.

The palace contains 116 rooms, with interiors furnished in different styles. There are a Pompeian vestibule, an English billiard-room, a Neo-baroque

Neo-baroque

Neo-Baroque is a term used to describe artistic creations which display important aspects of Baroque style, but are not from the Baroque period proper?i.e., the 17th and 18th centuries....
dining room, and a Jacob-style

François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter

Fran?ois-Honor?-Georges Jacob-Desmalter oversaw one of the most successful and influential furniture workshops in Paris, from 1796 to 1825. The son of Georges Jacob, an outstanding chairmaker who worked in the Neoclassicism and Directoire styles of the earlier phase of Neoclassicism and executed many royal commissions, Jacob-Desmalter, in...
study of maple wood, which elicited particular admiration of Nicholas II.

Livadia Palace

Construction history

Architecture

External links