The Russian Colony Alexandrowka

Warden’s house in the Russian colony Alexandrowka (© Barbara Plate)

 

Alexander Neweski chapel (© Barbara Plate)

The Alexandrowka colony was created in 1826-27 upon the request of Frederick Wilhelm III in memory of his deceased friend Czar Alexander I. The artist's village was built in the ground plan of a hippodrome, within which a St. Andrew's Cross is laid. The village consists of 12 yards, one warden's house at the point of intersection, a royal mansion, and a Russian Orthodox chapel (1829) on the neighbouring Kapellenberg hill in the north.

The artist's village of Glasowo, located in Pawlowsk park was the model for these unique architectural forms for farmsteads. The village's construction started in 1815 by request of Czar Alexander.

The arrangement was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné, and was simultaneously an illustration of the exemplary cultivation of fruit trees, which was considered necessary for the promotion of agriculture in Prussia, in the context of agrarian reform. The first inhabitants of this village were former members of a Russian soldier's choir. In 1999, the colony became part of the UNESCO World Heritage. Today, you are welcome in the Russian tea-room, which is now in the warden's house.