ST. PETERSBURG, September 26 (RIA Novosti) - A ship carrying the remains of Tsar Alexander III's Danish-born wife arrived in St. Petersburg Tuesday, where Maria Fyodorovna will be reburied next to her husband and other members of the Romanov dynasty.
Her descendants, including members of the Romanov family, and a Russian government delegation, headed by Culture and Mass Communication Minister Alexander Sokolov, and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, met the casket at the wharf.
The casket was placed in the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky at the Romanovs' former country residence, Peterhof, near St. Petersburg. The coffin will remain in the imperial family's former home church until September 28, when the remains will be reburied in St. Petersburg to honor Maria's last wishes, and in keeping with an agreement reached by the governments of Russia and Denmark in 2005.
Maria, known in her native country as Princess Dagmar, will be reburied at the Peter and Paul Fortress, a sepulcher for the Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia for more than 300 years.
The casket with the empress' remains left the Roskilde Cathedral and was paraded through Copenhagen before being put on the ship sailing to St. Petersburg September 22.
Danish Princess Marie Sophie Frederikke Dagmar (1847-1928), baptized a Lutheran, took the name Maria Fyodorovna when she converted to Orthodoxy before marrying Alexander III, who reigned from 1881 to 1894.
A descendant of the Romanov family praised the reburial as a happy event Tuesday, symbolizing the nation's reconciliation following a revolution and an ensuing Civil War that divided the country and forced many of its nobility and intellectuals to flee abroad.
"This is not a sad, but a happy event. We are not burying the empress, we are returning her remains to where they should rest," Nikolai Romanov, the great grandson of Grand Duke Nikolai, Tsar Alexander II's younger brother, told reporters.
The empress lived in Russia for more than 50 years, energetically engaging in charity and promoting education in the country. She only left Russia for Denmark two years after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
Maria Fyodorovna's son - Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II - and her daughter-in-law and grandchildren were killed by the Bolsheviks in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in 1918, but she never acknowledged the massacre. The purported remains of Nicholas II were reburied in St. Petersburg in July 1998.
