Maximilian Messmacher redesign some of the interiors, creating a Moorish Hall. The treasures of the house included the white marble staircase, the sitting room decorated with caryatids, the oak-paneled library, and the concert hall with portraits of great composers and panels depicting The Four Seasons. Grand Duke Paul's marriage was happy, but brief. Alexandra, after a difficult first pregnancy, gave birth to a daughter on , Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1890–1958). Alexandra was of a frail constitution and she was also homesick for her native Greece. In autumn of that same year, Grand Duke Paul took his wife for a holiday in Greece. At their return to Russia, he was appointed commander of the imperial house guards at Krasnoye Selo and, therefore, he was usually away fulfilling his military duties. Paul and his wife were given rooms at the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, but they saw each other only on weekends. Although Grand Duke Sergei and his wife Elizabeth moved to Moscow in May 1891, the two couples remained very close. In the summer of 1891, Paul and Alexandra decided to spend some time with them at Ilinskoie, Sergei's country estate outside Moscow. While there, Alexandra, seven months pregnant with her second child, carelessly stepped into a waiting boat, causing premature labor and the following day gave birth prematurely to a son, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia (1891–1942). Alexandra did not recover consciousness and died six days later on . Grand Duke Paul was deeply affected by Alexandra's death. During this period, his brother Sergei and Sergei's wife took care of Paul's motherless children in a pattern of behavior that would be repeated in the years to follow. In his widowhood, the grieving grand duke moved to Tsarskoye Selo, leaving his palace in St Peterburg that had been his home with Alexandra to never return. For a long time, the palace stood vacant. After that, the building changed many hands over time. When the revolution ended, the mansion was sold to the Russian Society for the Production of Equipment and Military Supplies. Eventually it became home to various Soviet institutions. The palace has survived to the present and today it is at the disposal of Saint Petersburg State University. Grand Duke Paul's brother, Tsar Alexander III, died on and Paul's nephew, Nicholas II, became the new Tsar. There was only an eight-year gap between uncle and