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24.11.2020

165 years ago in November 1855, 60-year-old Queen Dowager Anna of the Netherlands came to visit her birth country, Russia, for the last time.

The youngest of Emperor Paul I's six daughters, Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia was born in 1795 at the Gatchina Palace and raised at Tsarkoe Selo. At 21 she was married out to the Prince of Orange, later King William II of the Netherlands. After his death in 1843, she sold his Dutch paintings collection to Russia (now at the State Hermitage) and retired from court life. She even planned to return to Russia after a conflict with her son, King William III, in 1855.

Anna longed to see again the places where she was happy during her childhood and adolescence.

Upon arrival, she was greeted (with pomp, just as she liked) by her nephew, Emperor Alexander II. He first took her to Gatchina and then to Tsarskoe Selo, where the imperial family moved in November that year. 

Anna did not stay but in a few months returned to the Netherlands, where she was actively involved in charity projects. She died at 70 in the Hague in 1865 and was buried in Amsterdam. Never very popular as queen for being distant towards the public, Anna was nevertheless greatly respected and had a town in the Dutch province of North Holland named after her.

In her new homeland she was called "a Russian tulip transplanted into Dutch soil, where it bloomed in all its glory".