The Moscow Kremlin, Part Three: The Armoury: Countless Treasures of the Russian Tsars

This film focuses on the Russian State Armoury in the Kremlin, and its staggering collection of metalwork, jewelery, arms and armor. Though there are many medieval pieces, the collection is especially strong in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century western work, and in European metalwork and silverware up to the mid-nineteenth century. Ceremonial crowns are a special feature, such as the celebrated `Jericho Cap' helmet, or the crown of Ivan the Terrible. There are also many snuff-boxes, a collection of enameled miniature portraits (one of Peter the Great), silver chalices, censers, a twelfth-century Byzantine cross, and a jewel-encrusted gospel, again made for Ivan the Terrible and housed in the Cathedral of the Annunciation. The collection of English silverware is better than any in England itself, due to the ironic fact that Cromwell melted down so much silver during a republican revolution of a kind that would not come to Russia until the twentieth century.

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