The Grand Kremlin Palace consists of several different rooms. This page features two of the rooms as well as the Royal Apartments and the Red Staircase.
The Red Staircase The Red Staircase or Parade Staircase is the gateway to some of the most important receptions rooms in the Palace. Fifty-eight steps of history rebuilt here. The original ceremonial red staircase into the Palace of Facets, long since destroyed. It was on that Red Staircase, 400 years ago, that Ivan the Terrible killed the messenger, who brought him bad news; but more than 300 years ago, during a failed Palace coup, a young Peter the Great saw his friends thrown on bayonetts; that Napoleon Bonaparte , almost 200 years ago, walked into Palace after occupying the Kremlin. And on this Red Staircase that recent history has been made.
St. George's Hall The Red Staircase opens up to the largest room in the Grand Kremlin Palace, St. George Hall, named for highest military decoration awarded by the Czar. Elaborately decorated columns and marble slabs, bearing the knights of the order, line the wall of this more than 65 yard hall. It takes 3,000 light bulbs on six bronze chandeliers to light the room, which is still used today for official state functions.
St. Vladimir's Hall The octagonally shaped St. Vladimir Hall joins the newer areas of the Grand Kremlin Palace to the older buildings. Here a two ton chandelier is suspended in a 54-foot tall cupola, which is covered with elaborately leaf and scrollwork and studded with medallions of the Order of St. Vladimir. Not to be outdone by the ceiling, the floor is a mosaic of nut tree woods and stained oak. In the days of the Czars, St. Vladimir Hall was a place to greet middle level dignitaries. Today it is used for more formal occasions, like the signing of the SALT I treaty.
The Royal Apartments You have now entered the 7 most luxurious rooms in all of Moscow, the Royal Apartments. The capital had already been moved to St. Petersburg, but when the Czars would come to visit Moscow, this was their home away from home. Walk through these doors and you find 7 private suites for the Czar and his wife. Each room opening off one central hall. Reception rooms. Studies. Budoirs. Only the finest work of the finest craftsman was permitted in the Royal Apartments. The desks aren't painted, these are mosaics of jade, topaz, and other gems. This one 8 inch panel contains thousands of semi-precious stones. The clocks are imported from France, the finest porcelain set on casts of solid bronze. One fireplace--handcarved alabaster. Another, valued at several millions dollars, built of thousands of layers of malachite, a Russian semi-precious stone, and above them, a swirling sky of chandeliers.