Just outside the Marble Palace is a celebrated monument to Emperor Alexander III.  The statue originally bore the inscription "To Emperor Alexander III - the majestic founder of the great Siberian route" and was unveiled in 1909 outside Moskovsky Railway Station.  It was commissioned by Alexander III's son, the last tsar Nicholas II, and is the work of Italian sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy.  The statue was not initially universally appreciated, with some family members considering that it depicted the emperor as a caricature.  Although Alexander's widow did approve of the work, his son Nicholas even considered putting the statue up in far-away Irkutsk instead of the capital.  It was also ridiculed by dissidents - one famously described it as a brute on a hippopotamus, while another mocked the rather large size of the emperor and horse in saying that the Tsar-Bell and Tsar-Cannon have now been joined by the Tsar-Arse.

  Hardly surprisingly, the fate of the statue of the emperor viewed by many as authoritarian and anti-reform was in doubt after the Revolution.  But it remained in place up until 1937 when it was dismantled and placed in the storeroom of the Russian Museum.  There it remained up until 1994 when it was installed outside the Marble Palace.  There has since been talk of moving the statue to a more prominent position.

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