Palace of Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich: Historical and Artistic Reconstruction

It is worth noting the high skill level of the palace builders and its decorative looks - the effect reached thanks to a variety of materials and techniques. Referred to by the contemporaries as an ‘eighth wonder of the world’, the original palace is mentioned or represented in many surviving documents such as memoirs, measured drawings, painters’ canvases and models now stored in Russian and West European museums and archives. The palace interior reconstruction was based on surviving historical sources describing the original palace interior décor.

The original palace stood in the center of the Tsar’s residence, but nowadays, not to break up the historically developed Tsar’s Courtyard architectural complex, it was decided to reconstruct it in the southern part of the Kolomenskoe museum-reserve.

The palace exterior completely corresponds to the original. Inside you will find interior permanent displays, exhibition halls, ateliers, a gift shop and a café.

You will see

• an intricate architectural plan: the palace consists of 26 separate towers (‘terem’s’) connected into one complex building;
• several types of roofs: each tower (‘terem’) has an individual roof design so you can count 6 shape patterns: tents, ‘cubes’, ‘onions’, ‘helmets’, ‘barrels’ and ‘split barrels’;
• unique tile-faced stoves reconstructed after archaeological findings at Kolomenskoe;
• wall and ceiling paintings reproduced after archive documents data.

You will find out

• about the palace architectural planning peculiarities: it was divided into the men’s and women’s halves, so that the Tsar and Tsarevitches (the Tsar’s sons) lived separately from the Tsarina and Tsarevna’s (the Tsar’s wife and daughters);
• about the functions and décor details of the palace chambers (the original palace counted 270 chambers);
• about mechanical lions guarding the Tsar’s throne; whose throne had served as a prototype for that of the Moscow Tsar.