MOSCOW'S LOST TREASURES

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 137, 27 February 1918, Page 7

MOSCOW'S LOST TREASURES

sacked' relics destroyed. It is'difficult to believe, savs the Petrograd correspondent of the "Daily 1 Telegraph." that Russian hands havo destroy- ■ cd .the Cathedral of the Assumption and the tower Ivan Veliki. These two buildings were the very heart of the Kremlin, and wei'O to Moscow what St. Mark's and the Campanile arc to Venice. They had looked down on centuries of Russian history, and seemed to form an almost living link between (he past and the present. It was in the cathedral that the Tsars were crowned, and in former days the Patriarchs were buried there. In conformity with its august national uses, it was a treasure-house of sacred relics and priceless works of ecclesiastical art. Here were kept tlm shroud of Christ, a robe worn by the Virgin, one of the nails of the True Cross, and a picture said to have been painted by St. Luke. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that tho interior walls wore incrusled with gold and jewels. There is said to have been 11,9001b. of the precious metal in the ikonostas, the altar vessels, and other objects which adorned tho cathedral. This treasure was looted by the French in 1812, but was recovered by the Cossacks, who commemorated the rescue by presenting (o the cathedral a silver candelabrum weighing SSOlb. Like many of tho most nroniinnnt features of tho Kremlin, the building was the work'of a foreign architect, lis designer was a Bologneso named Fioraventi. Erected in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, it had suffered much in wars, foreign and civil, but it had always been restored on tho original lines. The tower "John the Great" was completed in 1600 by Boris Goduhoff, and was 320 ft. high. It consisted of the five stories, all octagonal except the top one, which was round. In it were hung 12 bells, the largest of which weighed 65 tons. The French seriously damaged this tower in 1812 by toaring down the gilded cross which crowned its dome in the mistaken notion that it was made of solid gold. Pew visitors can have left Moscow without climbng to the top of Ivan Veliki to see the wonderful view of the city and .the surrounding country which is to be had from the top of it. The Cathedral of St. Basil is one of the architectural curiosities of the world. It is crowned by a forest of onion-shaped domes, which are as varied in hue as in size. The colours havo tho one thing /in.common that they are all extraordinarily vivid, and the idea is current that their brilliancy is due to some process of making enamel, the secret of which has been lost. The interior of the building is almost as strange as the eiterwr. It consists of 11 chapels, some of which are as dark as vaults, grouped together in such a wav as to recall the ramifications of a rabbit warren. The building was destened by two Russian architects, and was'begun in 1554 bv Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the conquest of Kazan. It stands on the Red Square outside the battlem.ented walls of the Kremlin. . These buildings wore so sncml in-the eyes of Russians that the outrage done to ■them "-ill send a shudder of horror through the whole land.