The Moscow Kremlin, Part One: The Walls, Towers and Cathedrals

Begun eight and a half centuries ago, the development of the Kremlin, ancient seat of the Russian Tsars, is traced in this film from oak-wood fort to the red-brick fifteenth-century eminence seen today. Also explored is the Kremlin's huge Cathedral of the Assumption, begun in 1497 by the Grand Duke Ivan III using an Italian architect to bring the latest building styles from western Europe. It was here that generations of Russian patriarchs and Tsars were crowned, and in their turn buried beneath opulent tombs. The film features icon and mural paintings by, among others, Andrei Rubilov and his pupils, by Dionysus, and by his son Theodysius. Within walls of just over a mile in circumference, the Kremlin consists of a multitude of buildings and chambers: the Bell Tower that announced momentous decrees of state, or warned of uprisings or invasion; the seventeenth-century canopied turret from which Tsars surveyed their subjects in Red Square; the Armoury, holding mementoes and cannon from the famous 1812 victory over Napoleon; the seventeenth-century Archangel Cathedral, dedicated to the Archangel Mikhail, protector of Russia. The diversity of architectural style in the Kremlin is explained in this film in terms of the cosmopolitan range of builders called upon to add to the edifice over the centuries. Many of them were Italian, and at least one - Christopher Galloway in the seventeenth-century - was British.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.