Annunciation Cathedral. Faceted Palace

The most gold-capped cathedral on Cathedral Square is Annunciation Cathedral – its nine gold cupolas and shining roof immediately catch the eye. To the right of the cathedral we see the only secular building on the square – the Granovitaya, or Faceted, Palace, a white-stone building whose facia is decorated in angle-cut brickwork.
Master masons were summoned to Moscow from northern Pskov to build the Annunciation Cathedral in the late C15th. It had originally been the private chapel of the Grand-Princes of Moscow, and later became the Domestic Chapel of the Royal Palace complex. Here royal children were baptised, and monarchs made their confession. The original chapel had just three domes. After a fire in the C16th a much larger 9-domed church was built incorporating the tiny chapel at its centre. The C16th South Gallery is a memorable tribute to the excesses of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. He had been excommunicated from the Church for marrying a fourth time, in defiance of Church laws. However, he remained the Head of the Church. Thus a special balcony was built from which he could attend the services without setting foot in the cathedral itself.
The Annunciation Cathedral was, in recent times, the chapel where Patriarch Alexei II conducted a special service of prayer for the inauguration ceremonies of President Vladimir Putin, and subsequently for President Medvedev too.
The interior decoration of the Annunciation Cathedral is sumptuous and magnificent. The floors are paved with semi-precious stones – rare agate red-brown jasper. The walls and arches are painted with frescoes entirely on biblical themes. The underside of the central dome is painted with the face of Christ. But the jewel of the cathedral is its altar icon-screen. Some of the ikons displayed in it date back to 1405 and were painted by the leading artists of their day. The silver reliquary behind the ikonostasis holds the relics of more than 50 saints.
The white building decorated with a cut-work stone fascia is the Granovitaya, or Faceted, Palace. It is located to the right of the Cathedral of the Annunciation, and is the oldest civic building in Moscow. It now forms part of the complex of the Grand Kremlin Palace, whose eastern flank abuts the rear side of the Faceted Palace. Sadly you can't get inside the Faceted Palace unless you are a visiting Head of State – entrance is reserved only for VIP guests of the Russian President.
In 1487 the Italian architect Marco Ruffo – known in Russia by the name Marko Fryazin – was commissioned to built a grand Throne Room for royal receptions. The work was completed four years later by another Italian architect, Pietro-Antonio Solari.
The name “Faceted Palace” derives from the external decoration of the facade, finished in white-stone blocks cut into ornamental facets. ‘This stone-cutting so bold, Delights our eye to behold!’ wrote an enthusiastic medieval chronicler.
Since the Russian State forbids entrance to non-VIPs, allow us to take you inside in your imagination! The Throne Room is huge, square in plan, with four cross vaults resting on the side walls and a central four-sided pillar. The entire floorspace amounts to 495 square meters and the ceilings are 9 meters high. Here royal banquets were held, and the Council of Barons met. Ivan the Terrible feasted here when his armies took Kazan, and Peter the Great gave a banquet to celebrate his victory over Sweden.
The vaults and walls of the Faceted Palace are decorated with frescoes of the C16th. These frescoes represent the high point of such art in Russia for their time.
The stairway with stone lions on the railings, to the South end of the facade, is called The Red Porch. Here “red” means “beautiful”. In ancient Russian the words “red” and “beautiful” sounded identical – they’re still quite close even now.
The Red Porch was the traditional spot where Russia's ruling family would stand to be greeted by their people on official holidays. When the Kremlin was closed to common folk the royal children would play here on the steps. By evenings the royals would meet here to chat with courtiers, nobles or perhaps with the Patriarch. The processional route to Coronation ceremonies in Assumption Cathedral began down this stairway.
After the coronation ceremonies the newly-crowned monarchs would make a processional visit to the Kremlin cathedrals, then take these stairs to the Faceted Palace – where a regal banquet awaited them.
The last Tsar to follow this processional route up the stairway to the Red Porch to the Faceted Palace was Nicholas II in 1896. Stalin had the stairway dismantled in 1930s, and it was only replaced in 1994.