page_title: Private Apartments of the Winter Palace
section_title: Small Dining Room (8)
hierarchical_section_title: Private Apartments of the Winter Palace / Apartments of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna (2–10) / Small Dining Room (8)
caption_attribution_description: Interiors of the Winter Palace. His Majesty Own staircase (now October Staircase)
context_page_description: The Private Apartments of the Winter Palace are sited on the piano nobile of the western wing of the former imperial palace, the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. Access to the private rooms, for members of the Imperial Family, from the exterior was usually through the Saltykov Entrance which was reserved for use by only the Tsar, Tsaritsa and grand dukes and grand duchesses. A second access was through a discrete box-like porch, on the western end of the Palace's Neva façade. From the ground floor, it can be accessed from the October Staircase, formerly known as His Majesty's Own Staircase; this double-flighted imperial staircase was a secondary entrance to the private apartments, and provided a more convenient route to the palace's ground floor and private entrances than the more formal and ceremonial public route through the state apartments. During the October Revolution of 1917, this was the entrance by which the revolutionaries gained access to the palace in order to arrest the Provisional Government in the small private dining room. Since that date it has been known as the October Staircase and has a plaque commemorating the event.
context_section_description: Formerly known as the Pompeian Dining Room, the Small Dining-room was redecorated in 1894–95 for the newly married Nicholas II and his Tsaritsa, by Krasovsky. A rococo plaster-work style was chosen to frame 18th-century St Petersburg tapestries.
  Above the fireplace is a plaque recording the facts of the arrest of the Provisional Government which took place in this room on the night of 25 October 1917.
caption: His Majesty's Own Staircase (today the October Staircase), which gives access to the private apartments from the ground floor. It was used by revolutionaries during the storming of the palace.[25]
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