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By August 1894, the new lodge stood ready, and Alexander III made his first visit to the new, improved estate, accompanied by the Empress Marie and three of their five children. The future Nicholas II, then Tsesarevich, wrote happily in his own diary: “Its position on top of a hill is absolutely beautiful.” Nicholas found that the rooms had been decorated “with simplicity, taste and comfort....I have four delightful rooms-almost too luxurious....Sank with delight into the enormous heavenly bath, like a swimming pool, next to my bedroom."

The first hunt was a great success: “There was every kind of beast, but best of all a huge herd of bison, which wandered suddenly in front of the line of fire,” Nicholas recorded, noting that his sixteen-year-old brother Michael had killed one on the spot! He was newly engaged, and spent time exchanging vaguely saucy letters with his intended, Alix of Hesse (the future Empress Alexandra Feodorovna), telling her how much he had enjoyed bathing in his new sunken bathtub: a luxury he was to put in several of his own homes in future years. Alix responded in kind: “I should have liked to be there when you suddenly were in utter darkness; you would not have had a quiet moment! Are you not counting the moments until a certain someone dares cruelly to tickle you again? Besides, I should have smothered you with kisses!” Alexander III, though, was unable to sleep or enjoy the expeditions: he was inundated with work and his health had been poor for some months. Rising at eight to drink coffee with his wife, he usually went straight to his study after breakfast and worked through until at least two in the morning. Only rarely did he venture into the forest. After just two weeks, the visit was cut short when doctors advised him to go as soon as possible to the Crimea, where he was to die three months later.

The Romanovs were furiously protective of their privacy, but later holidays in Poland often turned into political gatherings. At various points during his own reign, Nicholas was joined at Białowieża by Kaiser Wilhelm II, Prince Albert of Monaco, and the Emperor of Austria, as well as members of his own, and his wife’s, family.

The Emperor would receive a delegation of local Polish nobles for a day of hunting, followed by a ceremonial dinner. During visits, a regiment of Grodno Hussars, with their colorful green, amaranth, and silver uniforms, or the Warsaw Lancers, in yellow and blue tunics, patrolled the park and served as extra hands on shoots.

Mikhail Nikolaevich, (Alexander II's uncle), the Romanov patriarch, riding in the forest, probably 1890s

Białowieża offered a number of sporting pleasures: there was fishing for salmon and trout in the rivers flowing through the estate; hunting for wolf, wild boar, and bear; shooting for pheasant, duck, hare, partridge, and woodcock; and stalking for red deer, elk, the famed bison, and moose. These expeditions were as carefully choreographed as an exquisite ballet. In the dim blue light of a late summer morning, as the lodge slumbered against the long shadows and pale mist hung over the encircling meadows, dozens of men, faces etched with disturbed sleep, filled the yard surrounding the stables and kennels. Hoofs crunched across gravel and wheels rattled over cobbles as Mitrophane Golenko, the Proctor at Białowieża, prepared for the day’s excursion. By seven, when sun danced against the tall windows of the lodge, he had taken his place outside the main entrance, sounding his horn to summon the Emperor and his guests to the days hunt. As they filtered out of the villa, they boarded waiting carriages that sped them into the dark forest.

For shoots, the Emperor and his guests, accompanied by a number of loaders, took up their positions at the edges of a forest glade. The Master of the Imperial Hunt waited in the middle of the forest to receive the Emperor and his guests, who all drew lots to pick the positions of their stands. Nicholas had two loaders for his guns, while the other shots each had one loader. As each drive progressed, the morning silence was shattered by repeated shots. From the rustling thickets and low-hanging foliage, one bird, then another, would speed toward the sky, only to be brought down by the excellent shots. With each round of fire, the incessant barking of the dogs rose, until the keepers released them to retrieve the fallen prizes. Nicholas was an excellent shot; after one occasion, he recorded: “There was a battue in the peasantry. I thoroughly enjoyed the magnificent weather and the spring-like day. The hunting was very successful: in all, we bagged 879 things. My tally was 115: 21 partridges, 91 pheasants, a white hare, and two rabbits.” By Imperial decree, only stags of ten or more points could be shot. The Emperor disliked shooting at groups of game driven by beaters, once expressing his fear that, in bringing his target down, he might also wound one of his men. Such sportsmanlike rules did not, however, prevent carnage on a massive scale: after one particularly fine day in the forest, Nicholas recorded in his diary: “Total game killed: 100 deer, 56 goats, 50 boar, 10 foxes, 27 hares-253 in 11 days.” The Emperor’s single largest shoot was 1,400 pheasants.

At midday, a small convoy of carriages left the main lodge, carrying folding tables, chairs, carpets, and baskets of food and wine. Early in her husband’s reign, when the majority of their visits took place, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna often accompanied the guns on the hunt for the sake of the exercise, though unlike many Edwardian women including her own sister, she did not actually shoot herself. She kept fond particularly memories of Białowieża in those days, “when we were young and went about together,” as she wrote years later.

Nicholas, Alexandra, and Princess Marie Bariatinsky walking at Bialowieza, 1897

Later, when she developed a heart problem that may or may not have been psychosomatic, she gave up walking, but often went with their guests’ wives when they all went to join their husbands for lunch in the forest. Footmen threw large Oriental carpets across the pine needles, constructing the collapsible table and camp chairs on it. An Imperial picnic in the forest did not lack elegance: butlers spread white linen cloths over the tables, setting each place with china, crystal, and silver. The Emperor’s guests dined on roasted venison, pig, fowl, pickled tongue, onions, caviar, black bread, sauerkraut, toasted mushrooms, cakes, pastries, and wild berries, all washed down with vintage sherry, Hoch, red wine, and port from the Imperial cellars as a brass band or a balalaika orchestra serenaded them.

The highlight of the annual stay at Białowieża was the hunt for Aurochs, or European Bison. By the turn of the century, thanks to the various wars, invasions, and periods when protection was removed, these magnificent animals had almost become extinct; only 800 remained, and could only be found in the Imperial reserves in Poland, or in the Caucasus. The gamekeepers carefully nurtured and fed the wild herd mainly to provide the Emperor and his guests with this rarest of all trophies. Mindful of their decimation in the course of the previous century, only a few could be brought down each season; by the beginning of the First World War, the number of Aurochs had reached some sixteen hundred. One witness at a hunt for Aurochs recalled: “A battue of between 1,500 and 2,000 peasants and guns is assembled, it covers an area of the forest...where advance reconnaissance has discovered the presence of adult Aurochs. If during this they come upon a herd of cows with young calves, the keepers remove them from the drive beforehand. To be as sure as possible of holding the Aurochs in, they light fires all around and keep them burning until the end of the hunt. The military Governor-General of the region nearly always participates in the hunt with a large number of units and lovers of the sport, for whom they make a particularly elevated booth hidden with firs and other tree branches. They decide on a given number of shots and mark them on the trees that the hunters have no right to leave. The other peasants and shooters should have guns with blank cartridges. When everything is ready, a shot is fired as a signal for the drive to start.”

Despite its magnificent situation and luxurious modern rooms, the lodge at Białowieża was rarely used in the end. Nicholas liked to hunt, but he was less fanatical than his father, and in the twenty-three years of his reign, the Imperial Family stayed here only five times: in 1897, 1900, 1903, 1906, and in 1912.

Nicholas and Alexandra at Bialowieza, 1897; and in 1903 with their daughters in front of the main entrance. The game was laid out in front of this very terrace every evening for inspection 1903

Each visit created a local stir disproportionate to its length: in 1897, Boleslaw Matuszewski filmed parts of the imperial hunt, and this became the first set of moving pictures ever shot in the Białystok area. Other members of the Dynasty, including Grand Duke Vladimir and his family, occasionally used the lodge, but it was more often sadly ignored. The Tsesarevich’s suite in particular cannot have seen much traffic: during his first three visits as Tsar, Nicholas had no son, though it’s likely that his brother Michael, the heir presumptive, occupied these rooms.

In 1906, the family came without the two-year-old heir, Alexei, and his sister Anastasia. Anastasia was recovering from a bout of diphtheria; why Alexei didn’t come is not clear, but he may have been convalescent too: the family had recently learned of his haemophilia, and as he learned to walk and run he bruised and bled often. In 1912, the one and only time he came to the lodge, Alexei suffered a fall due to “an awkward movement he made while jumping into a boat,” as his father noted. He appeared to recover from heavy bruising in his groin, but problems were to recur later in the autumn when they had moved on and away from Białowieża, and they almost cost the boy his life. The incident spoiled Alexandra’s memories of the lodge forever. “Poor suffering Baby lay for hours on my bed and my heart was also bad,” she wrote to her husband later “ – remembrances of pain and anguish – you all away [hunting] and the days endless and full of suffering. My name you will find on the bedroom window leading out onto the balcony under my initials in wire covering the windowpane.” She often scored her name in places of particular happiness or sorrow: they found her initials in the house where she was engaged, and also that where she was murdered.