He ate a cold lunch in the dining hall and showed the family’s rooms to his entourage, before taking them down to the bison reserve, which he found dry and dusty, with even the bogs dried up.  In the evening it became cool and the air in the woods so deliciously perfumed that he did not mind the many stops to change punctured tyres. That same year, with the advance of German troops, many of the interior fittings, along with the furniture, paintings, and light fixtures, were stripped from the lodge, packed on a train, and taken to Moscow, where they were stored at the Neskuchnoe Palace.

The fate of the Polish lodges echoed the tribulations of the Romanov Dynasty and of Poland itself.  During the last years of World War I, the Bialowieza estate were occupied, but remained largely undamaged.  In 1918, it became the property of the newly independent Polish Government, which installed a number of organizations within its rooms, including the Bialowieza Provincial Offices, and the Polish Forestry School.  In 1930, the lodge became the country retreat of the President of Poland, though the interior was not substantially altered.

During the Second World War, the Palace was seized by occupying German troops and used as their local headquarters.





The lodge's south-western tower after the war with its internal structure exposed. Only the steps remain today


The estate itself, though, survives and thrives.  Officially established as the National Park in Bialowieza (Park Narodowy w Bialowiezy) in 1932, Bialowieza Puscha was recognized in 1977 by UNESCO as a unique Biosphere Reserve, and two years later it was added to the list of World Heritage Sites.  Bialowieza is a well known scientific centre.  The Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw University, and the Forestry Research Institute have departments here, specializing researching natural forest ecosystems.

The village of Bialowieza today has a curious atmosphere.  It is very isolated, near the Belarusian border (half of the forest park remains in Belarus) and the journey from Warsaw is a considerable one, involving both trains through Bialystok or Hajnowka, and coaches.  An alternate long drive along pot-holed roads punctuated by run-down towns and peopled mainly by farm vehicles brings visitors to the former imperial estate; the poor condition of the roads is somewhat surprising, given that the area is visited both by tourists and by scientists who come to study the flora and fauna of the primeval woods.  Here scientific conferences take place, their delegates sipping cocktails in dinner dress at formal receptions between the lighted windows of Bialowieza’s two big, western-style hotels at either end of the village.  Outside the windows, the atmosphere is very different. The road is as pot-holed as the route through the forest, and wooden cottages line the few streets.  Many of these have guest rooms for the people who come here to cycle or walk in the forest, but most visitors who stay in them are Polish: a few of these small guest-houses may speak German and Russian, but English is rare.  At dusk, dogs wander into the road and bark half-heartedly at passers-by.  Groups of local lads come out and make their way to the few bars: the atmosphere is vaguely edgy.

The Palace Park still lies on the outer edge of the village, for Bialowieza has not greatly expanded.  With its red brick buildings, it is like a strange anomalous slice of Victorian England in rustic east European surroundings.  Immediately outside the present-day eastern gate at the end of the village is the Orthodox Church, still standing and open for services. It presents a startling colour contrast to the weather-beaten wooden cottages of Bialowieza village, but was designed in a more recognisably Russian nationalist style than many of the other red outbuildings on the estate.  This was the church used by the imperial family and suite when in residence, as shown in the photographs below of Nicholas II and Alexandra leaving a service in 1903, and of the service itself. It still serves today as the parish church for the large local Orthodox population. A Catholic Church a little further from the palace takes care of the spiritual needs of the remainder of Bialowieza village. Near the Orthodox Church, there are also a couple of large grim palace outbuildings, the original Hunters quarters, now inhabited by a children’s home and post office, with plaques recording unpleasant events here during the Second World War.



 
Beyond the palace park with its remaining outbuildings - the Chauffeur's House, the Bath House, the Hofmarshal's House and the Swiss House that was there before any of them - a gate leads to the area once known as King Augustus’s Garden. It is now part of the strict reserve that cannot be entered without a guide.  This is the oldest part of the forest, where bright fungi grow in the centuries-old carpet of fallen bark and vegetation, and thin shafts of sunlight pierce the pale new leaves far above to fall in flecks among the ferns and ivy on the forest floor.  Tracks wind into the woods, some bearing names recalling the forests ancient history as a Lithuanian royal reserve; as the trees close overhead and all sound deadens, the forest assumes a distinctly sinister feeling, where endless paths and imagination combine to create the effect of an impenetrable labyrinth.

The fabled Aurochs disappeared completely in 1919, the result of poaching and the ravages of war.  Ten years later, the species was reintroduced and has now grown to a herd of over 250 bison.  Many tourists pass through their reserve daily, for it is run almost like a farm or zoo, with large pens displaying the bison and the wild ponies, the tarpans, a pot-bellied animal once common in this part of Poland and in the Ukraine. Wild boars are there too, and come coolly up to the wooden fences to take apples or carrots offered them by children who clutch stuffed miniature replicas sold at the ticket stalls.

Where the palace once stood and there is currently just the forest information centre, a huge, modern building in glass and wood. An adjacent hotel in the same style is under construction, where tourists will be able to sleep on the site of the Tsar’s hunting lodge, disturbed as dusk falls around them only by the sound of wheels on gravel and the odd adolescent voice, as groups of teenage cyclists return to the youth hostel in the stable nearby.