Moscow Guide
The Kremlin
The Terem Palace
Opening time: The Faceted, Terem and Great Kremlin palaces are only accessible two or three times a month on a special guided tour, run by Patriarshy Dom Tours. The excursion is limited to 25 people.
Price: Tickets sell out fast despite the cost (R2100), so book as far ahead as possible; visitors must submit their passport and visa details and bring both documents to be verified by security
The archaic Terem Palace (Teremnoy dvorets), was the Imperial residence until Peter the Great moved the capital to St Petersburg in 1712. It incorporates two medieval churches built one on top of the other and two levels of service quarters, above which is the royal suite created for Mikhail Romanov in 1635–36 – terem means "tower-chamber". All the rooms were connected by a corridor used for the smotriny, the selection of the tsar's bride from a parade of eligible virgins, ostensibly asleep on eiderdowns. The palace fell into disuse in the eighteenth century and might have crumbled away had not Nicholas I commissioned Fyodor Solntsev to restore it in a re-creation of the seventeenth-century style, in 1837.
Nicholas's initial appears on the shields held by lions flanking the stairs from the so-called Golden Porch to the royal suite, while access from the floor below is via a grill-work door crawling with dragons and demons (a medieval feature, perhaps meant to ward off evil). Low-vaulted anterooms with ornate tiled stoves and murals lead to a Cross Chamber where the inner circle of boyars watched buffoons or listened to monks chanting while they forged a consensus, before filing into the red and gold Throne Chamber, to present it to their sovereign. Whereas tsars Fyodor, Mikhail Romanov and Alexei Mikhailovich were willing to let the boyars make policy, Ivan the Terrible only let them decide the menu for banquets, and other trivial matters.
The tsar and tsarevna slept in separate quarters, giving the tsar the choice of visiting his wife or a mistress downstairs. The four-poster bed in this room was an early sign of westernization (Russians traditionally slept on benches, wrapped in furs), imported from Germany via Arkhangelsk – a staggering distance to transport such a mundane item.