Suggested, not long before World War I, to be built as a museum of Russian war history,[1] based on Elena Tretyakova's collection gift, the exhibition content, when the war was already under way in 1915,[1] was focused by Emperor Nicholas II on then current heroic deeds of Russian warriors, but the display, at first shown in the St Petersburg Admiralty building,[1] opened in Martial Chamber for only a short time before the end of Russian Empire in February 1917,[3] and was closed down a year later[3] by Soviet authorities.

Members of the royal family often had their own estates, and Peter's second wife Catherine, who after death became Empress Catherine I of Russia, had her countryside manor in a southern suburb of the capital called Tsarskoye Selo, the Russian for Royal Village, renamed in the Soviet years after the national poet Alexander Pushkin because he spent his youth as a student and started writing in its boarding school the Emperor's Lyceum.

[6] The secluded Alexander Palace and Park became permanent home for the country's last Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his wife and children during the last 13 years[6] of his reign, making it very important in the county's life.

But back in 1914 when World War I broke out, Russian involvement against German and Austriam empires on the side of fellow Slavic people of the Balkans was popular.

[7] Nicholas II commissioned building of a church that became his family chapel, with outbuildings for clergy to live in and Martial Chamber, all planned in a Russian style of 17 century Yaroslavl city[8] (Russian Revival architecture), on the grounds of the Emperor's Farm Park[9] bordering Alexander Park, and the construction of the complex began in 1913 and went on until 1917-18.

The first monarch from the Romanov dynasty Michael of Russia was blessed on coronation with this icon, and the church dedication as well as the campus' 17-century Russian style were chosen to mark the 1913's tricentennial of the ruling royal house,[9] whose ascension to power signified the end of the Time of Troubles.

[8] The Alexander estate under Nicholas II received its own railway line from Saint Petersburg for royal family usage and its own train station built in the same Russian Revival style - Emperor's Pavilion.