)[2] The outer shell is rock crystal banded with emerald-green enameled gold studded with diamonds.

Inside the rock crystal egg is a gold support holding twelve miniature paintings.

Each location holds a special memory for Nicholas and Alexandra in the early days of their courtship, as they had just been married two years prior, in 1894.

When the large cabochon emerald on the apex is depressed it engages a mechanism that rotates the miniatures inside the egg.

A hook moves down and folds the framed pictures back, like the pages of a book, so two paintings can be fully seen at one time.