ROYAL COMPOUND OPENED AGAIN FOR THE 2009 SEASON FROM TODAY

Belgrade, 1 April 2009 – The Royal Compound opened today for tours following the winter. Their Royal Highnesses Crown Prince Alexander II and Crown Princess Katherine are pleased to call on all interested citizens to visit the Royal Compound. The organisation of regular tours continues in cooperation with the Tourist Organization of Belgrade every weekend from 1st of April through 31st of October.

The first official tour for 2009 is being organized for representatives of the media on Wednesday 1 April at 12pm.

Visiting the Royal and White Palaces is organized in such a way that visitors with professional tour guides will get acquainted with the history, art and culture in a nice two-hour walk through the Royal Compound. The tour includes the magnificent Royal and White Palaces and the Royal Chapel dedicated to the patron Saint of the Royal Family - St. Andrew the First Called.

Every Saturday and Sunday from 1 April through 31 October in two regular periods 11am and 2pm, the Royal Compound will be open to the public. Tours starting from 2pm will be guided as well in English. We invite all foreign guests to join and visit the Compound. The entry ticket includes the round trip transfer tourist bus starting from Nikola Pasic Square in Belgrade; the Royal Compound is only a few minutes from the city centre. There is also the possibility to organize group tours during work days with a previous appointment. For all information and reservations, visitors must visit the Tourist Information Centre, Makedonska 5, Belgrade or call 011/33-43-460 or email dvorski_kompleks@yahoo.com. The limit per group is 50 people.

Schools, students and pensioner associations interested in visiting the Royal Compound should call the Office of HRH Crown Prince Alexander directly at 011/306-4014 and 011/306-4038 or email: m.vasiljevic@dvor.rs and m.trajkovic@dvor.rs

We kindly request all media to send their accreditations for the first official tour of the new season no later than Tuesday, 31 March at 4pm.

The Royal Palace

The Royal Palace was built between 1924 and 1929 with the private funds of His Majesty King Alexander I (the grandfather of HRH Crown Prince Alexander). The architects were Zivojin Nikolic and Nikolay Krassnoff of the Royal Academy. The palace is made of white stone in the Serbian-Byzantine style. Attached to The Royal Palace there is a Royal Chapel dedicated to Saint Apostle Andrew The First-Called, the Patron Saint of The Royal Family. The Royal Palace was the home of King Alexander I and King Peter. Today The Royal Palace is the home of Crown Prince Alexander II and his family.

The White Palace

The White Palace is located within the same complex as The Royal Palace and it was commissioned by command of His Majesty King Alexander I as the residence for his three sons HRH Crown Prince Peter (the future King Peter II), Prince Tomislav and Prince Andrej.

King Alexander I envisaged that his three sons would require their own private accommodation when they became of age, but his assassination in Marseille caused the destiny of his sons to take a different turn. The young King Peter II became the new master of the Dedinje Complex and the completion of The White Palace was supervised by King Peter II great uncle HRH Prince Regent Paul. It was built from 1934 until 1937, as the project of the architect Alexander Djordjevic. When completed it became the official residence on loan of HRH Prince Regent Paul and his family, until King Peter II came of age.

The ground floor of this classicistic palace houses a large hall and a number of drawing rooms furnished in the style of Louis XV and Louis XVI with large Venetian chandeliers. There is also a library which had more than 35 000 books and a formal Chippendale dining room.

The Royal Chapel of Saint Andrew the First Called

The Palace Church is attached to the south side of The Royal Palace and linked to the main building by a colonnade of stone pillars. The Church is dedicated to St. Andrew the First Called (the Royal Family’s Patron Saint). The Church is based on the model of the monastery Church of Saint Andrew on the River Treska in Macedonia, which was built by Andrew the son of the Serbian medieval King Vukasin. The Church was designed and built at the same time as The Royal Palace.

The interior of the Church is covered with frescoes painted by a team of artists from the Belgrade Artist Association. Following King Alexander I instructions this group visited most of the Serbian medieval monasteries in order to copy their frescos. The group was led by academician Nikolai Kasnoff. After preparing the walls and cataloguing the drawings the final decision to go ahead was made by King Alexander I. The Russian painters Boris Obrascov, Nikolai Maiendorf, Vladimir Bickovski, Viktor Sevcov, and Reitlinger and Evgeny Varnu-Secret were chosen to paint the Church. All painters were requested to produce records of their previous work in medieval monasteries. The whole project for the completion of the Church took about 36 months.

This is only a brief introduction for all interested citizens, who we invite to visit this extraordinary cultural and historical place that tens of thousands domestic and foreign tourists and guests visited during the last year.