Moscow as the former capital of Russia before Peter the Great’s reign, and the current capital of Russia Federation after the October Revolution is considered to be one of the most major cities of Russia. This city which has millions of tourists and visitors from around the world each year is one of the top tourist destinations of the world. There are several famous tourist attractions around this enormous city, but the most important one is the Red Square which is located at the heart of the city. Red Square is the first target on the list of any Moscow tour including all of its attractions such as Kremlin Palace, Gum Mall, Kazan Cathedral and St. Basil's Cathedral, the State Historical Museum of Russia. You can witness the beautiful architecture of most of these buildings, but some of the treasures of Red Square and Kremlin are almost hidden from the eyes of bypassers. For example, the Terem Palace which is almost hidden from outside of the Kremlin walls except for its golden domes.
The Terem Palace is like a jewelry box inside the Kremlin which visiting inside of it would be almost impossible. This palace was the living place of Tsars and their families. Even today, the palace is the house of the President of the Russian Federation. That is the reason why a tour inside the palace is almost unlikely unless your Russia tour agency requests a group visit from several weeks upfront.
The ground floor of the five-story palace was used to be the place where the servants live and also the warehouse for the salted foods. The second floor was the workshop of the Tsarina where she and her servants sewed clothes for all the member of the imperial family. The third floor was the place where Tsarina and Tsars’ children lived. The next top floors had belonged to the Tsar himself, the fourth floor was Tsar’s apartment, and the fifth floor was where the consultants gathered and waited for the Tsar to arrive.
The first imperial palace was built by Aloisio da Milano in the 16th century at the place where the Terem Palace stands today. Mikhail Feodorovich ordered to rebuild the entire palace aside the ground floor which is survived to this day. Mikhail also wanted several additions such as towers, galleries, golden staircases, and also the tent-like top floor which turned to the gathering place for the counselors of the Tsar later, to be added to the palace.
The eleven golden domes of the palace’s church were attached to the Tsarina chamber that Ivan the Terrible built for his wife in 1560 by the orders of Mikhail Feodorovich too. The exterior of the palace decorated with colored tiles and brick tracery which has the three Red, Orange, and Yellow color. The Interior had also its wall painted, but those original paintings were destroyed after several fires in Kremlin and Moscow. However, the paintings were repainted following the original ones in the 1837’s grand restoration of the Kremlin Palace.
Unfortunately, as we mentioned before it’s almost impossible to visit the inside the palace, and witness the beauty of the decorated rooms inside, though Kremlin is definitely in your tour to Moscow program, it would be good to know the history of the place and the buildings inside the complex. Also, one of the main attractions of this complex is the architecture of its buildings, so it's quite better to know them before visiting them in real life. The Kremlin complex has the Palace of Facets, the Terem Palace, the Assumption Cathedral, the Cathedral of Annunciation, the Cathedral of Archangel, and several more attractions which made its name to pop up at every Russia tour targets' lists.
