Major Revelioti acquired Livadiia from his predecessor in the battalion, Colonel Lambros Katsionis, and sold it to Lev Severinovich Pototskii in 1834. The estate flourished under the stewardship of yet another member of the Vorontsov network. (Among other things, Pototskii built remarkable marble fountains at Livadiia, including one made from a sarcophagus he brought from Pompeii.)
When Pototskii died in 1860, his daughter sold Livadiia to the imperial family. Alexander II’s subsequent decision to summer there, where he could hunt the Massandra forests to his heart’s content, caused a steep escalation of interest and investment in the region.