Ahead at the end of the week we have two whole days off. Of course, they need to be carried out properly and have a good rest before the next working week. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to lie down all day in front of the TV - ideal for me leisure... Therefore, this weekend I suggest you go to the grandiose excursion to the Moscow Kremlin absolutely free!
During it you will be able to see what not every person has seen. Don't believe me? Then answer: how many of you were in the office of the President of Russia and sat at his table? And who was inside the Spasskaya Tower and saw the mechanism of the famous chimes? And that's not all that you will see during this amazing excursion ...
Yes, perhaps many of you have already visited the Moscow Kremlin - after all, thousands of tourists come here every day. Then you probably walked along Ivanovskaya Square, fascinatedly looked architectural ensemble Cathedral Square, perhaps even went inside the Archangel and Assumption Cathedrals. However, the Kremlin keeps places where tourists are never allowed - these are the territory and buildings that are part of the complex of the residence of the President of Russia.
A virtual excursion to the Kremlin will open all these premises and territories for you. They will appear before you in all their glory. You can even make out what books are in the office of the President of Russia and admire the beauty and sophistication of the ancient paintings of the Faceted Chamber. You will be able to consider everything in such details and trifles, as if you yourself were there.
Friends, creators of the virtual 3D tour of the Kremlin created a very valuable gift for us! We will be able not only to visit the premises closed to tourists, but also to admire the panoramas of almost the entire center of Moscow from a bird's eye view.
You will discover the city from those angles that you never imagined before: a view from the dome of the Grand Kremlin Palace, from the dome of the Senate, from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, from the roof of GUM, etc. Filming for this project took two years!
I completely forgot to say: the whole excursion you will be accompanied by our famous, beloved actor Alexei Vladimirovich Batalov. His wonderful voice in a leisurely manner of presentation will tell you about many interesting facts of those places where you will be transferred.
It is very easy to move around the places where you will be transported. Everything is done with the mouse and does not cause any difficulties. You can look around, you can zoom in and out, you can immediately get historical background etc.
Well, friends, I convinced you that virtual tour is the Kremlin really worthwhile? I wish you a pleasant journey, which you can take right now!
Friends, maybe you have already visited the rooms and chambers of the Kremlin in reality? Share your impressions in the comments.
Moscow Kremlin - a fortress in the center of Moscow and its oldest part, the main socio-political, historical and artistic complex of the city, the official residence of the President Russian Federation... Located on the high left bank of the Moskva River - Borovitsky Hill, at the confluence of the Neglinnaya River. In plan, the Kremlin is an irregular triangle with an area of 27.5 hectares (ha). The southern wall faces the Moskva River, the northwestern one faces the Alexander Garden, the eastern one faces Red Square.
Antiquity
The first settlements on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin date back to the Bronze Age (II millennium BC). A Finno-Ugric settlement dating back to the early Iron Age (second half of the 1st millennium BC) was found near the modern Archangel Cathedral. At this time, the settlement of the clergy-type occupied the center of the upper above-floodplain terrace of Borovitsky Hill (the area of the present-day Cathedral Square) and, possibly, already had fortifications. From the northeast, the village was protected by two ravines: one to the north of the present Trinity Gate overlooked the Neglinnaya River, the other lay between the Petrovskaya and Second Nameless Towers of the modern Kremlin.
XI - XIV centuries
Following the Dyakovites, with the beginning of the Slavic colonization of the Oka and Moskva River basins in the 10th century, the top of Borovitsky Hill was settled by Vyatichi (possibly, mastering the former settlement). Presumably, the Vyatichi settlement on the hill consisted of two fortified centers - the first, larger in area, was located on the site of the modern Cathedral Square, the second occupied the tip of the cape. Presumably, both centers were protected by a ring fortification consisting of a ditch, a rampart and a stockade. Vyatichi included two ravines connected by a ravine, which performed the same function even in pre-Slavic times, into the fortifications; the ravines were transformed into a moat up to 9 meters deep and about 3.8 meters wide. Presumably, a certain political and administrative center was located on the cape part of the settlement: at archaeological site here a Kiev hanging seal of the end of the 11th century was found. Both parts probably had their own cult centers - the upper one in the area of Cathedral Square, the lower one “near Bor”, on the site of the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist that stood here. The Kremlin toponyms "Makovitsa", "Mountains" and "Bor" also belong to the pre-princely time. These two centers were surrounded by a posad that stretched along the Neglinnaya and Moscow rivers. The development and prosperity of the settlement was associated with the trade routes running here: there was a lively trade between East and West along the Moskva River. In addition to the waterway, two land roads passed side by side - one to Novgorod (later Volotskaya), the other from Kiev through Smolensk to the northeast; both roads were connected at the foot of Borovitsky Hill by a ford across the Moskva River (in the area of the present Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge). The first mention of Moscow in chronicles dates back to 1147. In 1156, the first fortifications with a total length of about 850 meters and an area of about 3 hectares were built on the territory of the modern Kremlin. The fortification was surrounded by a moat ...
Route: Kutafya Tower - Trinity Bridge - Trinity Tower - Ivanovskaya Square - Cathedral Square- Trinity Tower - Alexander Garden.
Length: 2.2 km.
View of the Kutafya Tower, Trinity Bridge and Trinity Tower
The territory inside the fortress walls of the Kremlin has the status of a museum-reserve. It is a specially protected object, since the residence of the President of the country is located in the heart of Moscow. All travelers start from the western side of the Moscow Kremlin, because tourists can only get inside through the Trinity Gate. The most convenient way to get to the Trinity Tower is from the Aleksandrovsky Sad metro station, the exit from which is located 50 meters from the south of the squat Kutafya tower.
View of the south facade of the arsenal
The territory of the Kremlin is open on any day, except Thursday, from 10.00 to 18.00. To visit it, you must have a ticket for events held at the State Kremlin Palace, or entry tickets for visiting the Armory, the Diamond Fund, temples and museums of the Cathedral Square and the Ivan the Great Bell Tower.
If you have already bought a ticket, you can safely go to the checkpoint at the Kutafye Tower. Those who do not have a ticket yet should buy it at the box office located nearby, in the middle of the Alexander Garden.
Cannons at the walls of the arsenal
Ticket offices are open from 9.30 am to 5 pm. There are also storage rooms where you need to leave bulky luggage and backpacks. It should be borne in mind that in summer and on days school holidays long queues line up at the Kremlin ticket offices. Tickets cannot be purchased in advance. Here they sell only tickets valid on the day of visiting the Kremlin.
Through the Kutafya Tower, tourists find themselves on the red-brick Trinity Bridge, laid over the place where the full-flowing Neglinka River used to flow.
View of the State Kremlin Palace
The bridge leads to the gate of the Trinity Tower, which stands exactly in the middle of the northwestern wall. This is the tallest tower in the Kremlin. It rises 80.1 m. Inside the fortress there is the Presidential Orchestra and there are special rehearsal rooms and studios.
The narrow Palace Street goes to the right behind the tower. At its beginning there is a post, beyond which tourists are not allowed. It is worth paying attention to the bright facade of the Amusement Palace, which is located 150 m south of the Trinity Gate.
Senate palace from the south
On the left, along the way, you can see the picturesque two-story building of the Arsenal, and in front of it there is an exhibition of captured cannons. Some of the old artillery pieces lie directly on the paving stones, others are mounted on metal carriages or laid on special stone platforms. Cannons are also placed along other facades of the Arsenal, but tourists are only allowed to the southern facade of this historic building.
Opposite the Arsenal stands the massive State Kremlin Palace, which many people habitually call the Palace of Congresses.
Ivan the Great Bell Tower from Ivanovskaya Square
This is one of the main concert venues in Russia, where ballet performances are shown all year round, as well as concerts with the participation of the country's best singers and dancers.
From here you need to walk a little to the east along Troitskaya Street. The wide steps leading to the entrance to the Congress Palace will remain on the right. And on the left will open a green Senate square, which lies between the Arsenal building and the majestic Senate Palace.
Tsar Bell at the Walls of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower
Travelers are not allowed into this part of the Kremlin either, so they have to admire the intricate southern facade of the Senate Palace and the blue firs growing in front of it in the distance.
Soon, Troitskaya Street turns right (to the southeast) and leads to the spacious Ivanovskaya Square, dominated by the high Ivan the Great Bell Tower. At the beginning of the 17th century, when Russia was ruled by Tsar Boris Godunov, the building of the bell tower was completed up to 81 meters. After that, it was the most tall building in the country.
Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles
Cathedral of the Archangel
In the west of the square is the snow-white Faceted Chamber. And if you go around it to the north, then the domes of the Church of the Position of the Robe of the Mother of God and the Verkhospassky Cathedral open.
One of the main ones on Cathedral Square is the ascetic Cathedral of the Assumption, which occupies a place opposite the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. It was built in the 70s of the 15th century and until 1917 had the status of a cathedral church in Russia. Inside the cathedral there is a tomb with tombs with the ashes of Moscow metropolitans and patriarchs.
Blagoveshchensky cathedral
Behind the Assumption Cathedral, you can see the white facade of the Patriarchal Palace and the silvery domes of the Church of the Twelve Apostles, which close Cathedral Square from the north. The hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church have lived inside the palace for many centuries. Today, this building houses a unique exhibition of church art, a collection of antique clocks, as well as personal belongings of Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible and Patriarch Nikon.
Assumption Cathedral
This is where the main part of the trip to the sights of the Moscow Kremlin ends. After examining the facades of churches and museums, you need to go back to Troitskaya Street, walk along it to the Trinity Gate and go out to the Alexander Garden.
Those who are in no hurry can stroll through the territory of this green park, which stretches along the entire north-western wall of the Kremlin.
Monument to Alexander I in the Alexander Garden
250 m south of the exit from the Kutafya tower, in the center of the Alexander Garden, an expressive monument to Alexander I appeared several years ago. Bronze figure the king stands on a high granite pedestal, the top of which is decorated with the image of a two-headed eagle. From here it is easy to return to the entrance to the Aleksandrovsky Sad metro station.
Of course, the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell. After all, together they weigh more than 240 tons! Both monuments stand next to the Ivan the Great Bell Tower and immediately attract the attention of visitors. Tsar Cannon and Tsar Bell are well known, they are even considered symbols of Russia.
The Tsar Cannon has the world's largest caliber (890 mm). It was cast in bronze in 1586 at the Cannon Yard in Moscow by master Andrei Chokhov. Its weight is almost 40 tons, its length is more than 5 meters.
It is believed that the Tsar Cannon was fired only once - with the ashes of the deposed Tsar False Dmitry. There is also an opinion that the Tsar Cannon had only a decorative function, but this version is unlikely: in those days, attacks by the Tatars were not uncommon and the manufacture of a huge fake weapon did not make sense. Most likely, the cannon was intended for shooting with "shot", that is, buckshot. Its mouth could carry thousands of deaths for more than once or twice the Tatar cavalry besieging Moscow. A kind of weapon of mass destruction of the 16th century.
It is known that in the 17th century the cannon was located on a low stone building resembling a tribune, traces of which were found by archaeologists in the southern part of Red Square. And in the 16th century, the Tsar Cannon was probably installed near Place of execution on Red Square, in the direction of the Moskvoretsky Bridge leading to the Tatar side.
The gun carriage and cannonballs are not original - they were cast in the 19th century, carrying a purely decorative function. You cannot shoot cannonballs, and as for the gun carriage, it is not known whether it is needed at all, because a weapon of this type - a bombard - was usually fixed motionlessly in the ground. In the Kremlin, the Tsar Cannon turned out to be under Emperor Peter I, who wanted to build a tseikhhauz (arsenal) there to store various firearms and other curiosities and just weapons of different eras.
Tsar Cannon and Tsar Bell are monuments of foundry and artistic craft. Both are decorated with elaborate reliefs in the form of ornaments, cartouches, rosettes, curls. It is easy to notice on the bell large portraits of two sovereigns - Empress Anna Ioannovna, who ordered the bell to be cast, and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. During the reign of the latter, an earlier bell was cast, from the metal of which the Tsar Bell was cast. There is also an inscription about the history of the bell and the signature of the Motorins. On the Tsar Cannon, you can also find inscriptions glorifying the Tsar-customer Fyodor Ioannovich, and the signature of the master Andrei Chokhov.
Our online tour of the Kremlin is coming to an end. Of course, you can endlessly talk about this place on the map of our Motherland. Here age-old layers of history form a special "force field" that attracts with its grandeur and unique beauty.
Currently, the team is a site with the support of the President of Russia V.V. Putin and the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) is implementing a project for panoramic photography of the historical and architectural ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square. Although the shooting is still ongoing, and all the results of our work will be presented on the site only in a few months, today the site project and the Russian Geographical Society have prepared a gift to the Russians for the Day of the City of Moscow - a unique virtual tour over the Kremlin from five spherical panoramas!
Our helicopter flew around the Kremlin stars, and the chimes on the Spasskaya tower, and the Ivan the Great bell tower, and the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed. Until now, no one has succeeded in taking photographs of the Kremlin from such unusual angles.
In December 2012, we applied for a grant from the Russian Geographic Society for the development of the project site. Quite unexpectedly for us, we were invited to a meeting of the media council, and after the presentation of the project, our grant was approved. After that, our cooperation with the Russian Geographical Society began.
The ceremonial presentation of grants from the Russian Geographical Society took place in April this year at a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Russian Geographical Society, chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin. During his speech at the meeting, our colleague Sergei Semyonov asked V. Putin for help in obtaining permits for filming the Moscow Kremlin from the air. The President supported our request, and by now we have already completed several filming over the territory of the Kremlin.
And now we want to bring to your attention some historical facts associated with this unique architectural monument.
"Kremlin" is called the city fortifications in ancient Russia... A lot of kremlin have survived to this day in Russia: Novgorod, Kazan, Pskov, Kolomensky ... But only one Kremlin needs no explanation: the world-famous Moscow Kremlin in the Russian capital. This is the largest fortress in Europe, preserved and operating to this day. The Kremlin is the most important landmark of Moscow, the seat of the President of the Russian Federation and the “calling card” of the whole country.
The first settlements on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin date back to the Bronze Age - II millennium BC, but the first fortifications appeared here much later: in 1156. The wooden fortification with a total length of about 850 meters and an area of about 3 hectares was surrounded by a moat 16-18 meters wide and 5 meters deep.
During the Mongol-Tatar invasion, the Kremlin was destroyed and then rebuilt. But only by the middle of the XIV century, under the Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy, the wooden walls of the Kremlin were replaced with walls and towers from the local white stone... It was from this period that the name "Moscow white-stone" is often found in the annals.
However, by the 15th century, under Ivan III the Great, this building had to be rebuilt, as the walls literally "floated". Italian architects were invited to restore the Kremlin, and thanks to this, it combines the best achievements of both Russian and Italian architectural art. So, for an example of an impregnable fortification was taken famous castle Sforza in Milan, while the temples of the Kremlin were built according to strict Russian traditions.
Fired brick was chosen as the main material for the construction. Cathedral Square with the Assumption and Annunciation Cathedrals, the Faceted Chamber, the Archangel Cathedral - the burial vault of Russian princes and tsars, and the Ivan the Great Bell Tower became the center of the Kremlin. Another major restructuring of the Kremlin took place in the late 15th - early 16th centuries, and since then, the appearance of this sight of Moscow has remained practically unchanged - with the exception of color.
The fact is that the walls of the Moscow fortress, according to historical descriptions and picturesque images, remained white for many centuries. The burnt brick was diligently whitewashed: both for the sake of the preservation of the masonry, and in memory of the white-stone Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy. It is believed that it was decided to make the Kremlin red by decision of Stalin in 1947 - to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Moscow. And before that, during World War II, the Kremlin was uniquely disguised. A fantastic project for that time was developed by a group of academician Boris Iofan: walls of houses, black holes of windows were painted on white walls, artificial streets were built on Red Square; even Lenin's Mausoleum was covered with a cap that represented a house. This is what helped the greatest monument of history and architecture to reach our days without being damaged by the bombing.
