MODERN KREMLIN AS A WONDER BOX

Putaruru Press, Volume XXI, Issue 1236, 26 June 1947, Page 3

MODERN KREMLIN AS A WONDER BOX

STORY IN SILVER AND GOLD Now a City Within a City •Some of the correspondents now in Moscow were invited to go into the Kremlin, the citadel which once enclosed all there was of Moscow, and which is now a city within a city. From outside it looks a tightlypacked wonder-box of cream-colour-ed palaces and- golden-domed churches, all ranged. above the castellated brick walls 20 or 30 yards high. As we walked through the Poro-vit-s-ki 'Gate—the one by which Napoleon entered—it was the quietness and space cf it which struck us most. A brc.ad avenue led to the Cathedral square, with churches of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries on all sides. •From that moment we were walking through five or six centuries of Moscow's story, a story told- in silver and gold, marble and malachite, gold-threaded vestments and- crown jewels, beginning with thirteenthcentury icons (newly restored in part to their original brightness) and ending with the high Government offices of to-day. There was a low-vaulted room, with its heavy gilt doorway and pictured ceiling, in the Granovitaya Palace, where Ivan the Terrible Celebrated his victory at Kazan; and other small rooms where the early Tsars fought "to maintain their power against the rich boyars. Small coloured- light® from low windows- throw extra patterns' on to the Walls of blue, cinnamon and scarlet.

Diamond Studded Icons The wealth in the churches, with their diamond-studded' icons in frames of gold, and their silver crosses bring reminders of another competing power—-the power of the patriarchs. Almost all is wonderfully preserved-; the drab western visitors seemed to be intruders among the past splendours which they could hardly take in. Simpler in style, more spacious, is the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvoretz, the great Kremlin -palace built 100 years ago for Nicholas I. One long high hall of pure white is dedicated to the order of St. George; another in pink and- gold commemorates the Order of Alexander Nevski. From such reception halls- with their chandeliers of 3000 electric candles we wandered through the private apartments of the Tsars and Tsaritsas. Then across a courtyard to the Oruzh-einaye Palace and back to the old splendours in the armoury and museum. Did every ambassador of 300 or 400 years ago -bring dinner services of gold and silver as presents to the rulers of Muscovy ? They seem to have done; and the national piride is curiously reassured to notice that our own Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador was no less generous than his colleagues. Peter the Great’s fowling pieces, Ivan the Terrible’s domed and pinnacled crown, Catherine the Great’s silken coronation dress, the Tsaritsa Elizabeth’s -travelling sledge, and uniforms of the later Tsars from Alexander I to Nicholas ll—all bring the past very near and a-lmost articulate. 'After four hours the mind could take in no more, and- we were back in- the bustle and traffic of Moscow.