House of Romanov royal mysteries

House of Romanov royal mysteries

Enjoy a walk around shady alleys, lined with beautiful sculptures of the Summer and Michailovskyi garden, that was a part of the former. See the place where Peter himself planted trees and designed the layout of his future garden, which was to rival Versailles and became a playing ground for future emperors. Find out stories, connected with the House of Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia till the XX-th century. We visit places surrounded by intrigue, mysteries, plots and even murder as it was too often during Russian history. Visit one of the most romantic places in St.Petersburg, St. Michael's castle, which was designed by Paul in order to protect himself from plotters, but still he could not escape his destiny and died a tragic death according to all the prophecies that predicted it. We visit Saviour on the Blood, a Russian revival-style cathedral, which was built on the same exact spot where Alexandr II (the Liberator) was blown up by a bomb, thrown by the hand of a terrorist.

We visit the marble palace, the only one faced with natural stone, red granite, glowing in a setting sun as an afterglow of their affair and which was a parting gift from Catherine the Great to one of her lovers-Grigory Orlov one of the 5 brothers, who brought her to power and later may be even initiated the killing of her deposed husband, because he wanted to marry her, but couldn't do it while Peter III was still alive. We visit St. Michael castle, construction of which cost more than Winter Palace and Hermitage, surrounded by moats and guns built by paranoid Paul I who had every reason to be afraid of assassination and moved in quckly before it was finished only to be killed there by plotters and former associates of his mother. We learn the story of Paul I, "Russian Hamlet" Catherin's sociopathic son, who turned this way because, separated from his own mother at birth and living in constant fear under the shadow of his usurping throne mother, only could guess whether she gave an order to kill her husband and his father. We learn how Alexandr I, son of Paul, called “Russian sphinx” most controversial of Russian tzars, torn between his grandmother’s grooming him for the throne with the help of most progressive liberal thinkers of that age at big court and his father military obsessed Prussian sergeant style goose step drilling in small court, became very religious at the end of his life and marched across whole Europe to liberate it from menace of Antichrist personified as Napoleon, but failed to carry out reforms that he so enthusiastically started in his own country at the outset of his reign. How he from liberal reformer turned into conservative religious thinker and protector of thrones and altars in Europe who according to a legend, that became popular after his death, didn't even die but became a hermit monk in Siberia. We learn about Alexandr II, son of Nicolas I , who gave freedom to serfs, living in worse conditions and the number of whom were far superior to slaves liberated by “annunciation of proclamation act”, and who was caring project of future constitution in his pocket the day he was killed by terrorist’s bomb. And how this assassination of Alexander II, changed the course of Russian history yet again from liberal reforms to slavophile ways, based on special bonding between the tzar and the people and not on democratic institutions. These pre-Petrine Moscovite ways adhered to by successor of killed tzar, Alexander III, the most typical Russian tzar, who could bent horseshoes with his bare hands and whoes equestrian colossal representation we will see, found their embodiment in  "The Saviour on Spilled Blood” built by him on exact spot of his father assassination inside the church, which became his memorial.