EXPOSITION

The Armoury Chamber was designed and built under the supervision of the architect Academician Konstantin Ton as a part of the Grand Kremlin Palace. It was completed and specially designed as a museum in 1851.

The museum’s unique collection of decorative and applied art is closely linked with the history of the Moscow Kremlin itself. The basis of the collection consists of valuable items that had been preserved for centuries in the tsars’ treasury and the patriarch's vestry. Some of the exhibits were made in the Kremlin’s workshops; others were accepted as ambassadorial gifts. The museum itself was named after one of the oldest Kremlin's treasure houses. 

The Armoury keeps ancient state regalia, ceremonial dress, vestments of Russian hierarchs, the most extensive collection of gold- and silverware by Russian craftsmen as well as West European silver artwork, mediaeval Russian embroidery, weapons and arms, carriages and horse ceremonial harness.

More than four thousands items of applied art of both Russia and European and Eastern countries of the 4th - early 20th centuries are displayed in the Armoury Chamber. The highest artistic level and particular historical and cultural value of the exhibits have made the State Armoury of the Moscow Kremlin a world-wide known museum.

Floor plan: