Moscow, Russia
Московский Кремль · mahs-KOF-skee KREML
A walled triangle of 27 hectares on a hill above the Moskva river: the fortress where Moscow began, the seat of the tsars and of the Soviet leaders, and today of the Russian president. Inside the red walls, built by Italian masters in the 1480s and 90s, stand three white cathedrals with golden domes, a bell that was never rung and a cannon that was never fired.
Photo: Юрий Д.К., CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
A kremlin is the fortified heart of an old Russian town. Moscow's grew from a wooden fort first recorded in 1147. Ivan III, who married a Byzantine princess and threw off Tatar rule, rebuilt it in stone. Between 1485 and 1495 Italian engineers raised the red brick walls you see: 2.2 kilometres long, with twenty towers. Their swallowtail battlements are the same as those of castles in Milan and Verona.
Peter the Great moved the capital to St Petersburg in 1712. In 1918 Lenin moved it back, and for nearly forty years the Kremlin was closed to the public. Since 1955 visitors may walk in its squares and see its cathedrals and treasures. The rest is the working seat of the president.
There are two tickets. The Cathedral Square ticket covers the grounds, the cathedrals, the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon. The Armoury Chamber has its own ticket with a timed entry. The Diamond Fund, inside the Armoury building, is run by another body and sold separately. The Grand Kremlin Palace and the government buildings are not open.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The grounds, the Tsar Bell and Tsar Cannon | Cathedral Square ticket |
| The Assumption, Archangel and Annunciation cathedrals | Cathedral Square ticket |
| The Ivan the Great Bell Tower | Closed in 2026 |
| The Armoury Chamber | Own ticket, timed |
| The Palace of Facets | Outside only |
Three cathedrals face each other across the square. The Assumption Cathedral, where the tsars were crowned. The Archangel Cathedral, where they were buried until Peter the Great. The Annunciation Cathedral, their private chapel, with nine golden domes.
Above them rises the white Ivan the Great Bell Tower, 81 metres. Until the twentieth century no building in Moscow was allowed to be taller.
At its foot sits the Tsar Bell, the largest in the world, about 200 tonnes. It was cast in 1735 and still in its casting pit when a fire broke out in 1737. Water thrown on the hot metal cracked it, and a piece of 11 tonnes fell off. It has never rung.
"The Kremlin is one building." It is a fortress holding palaces, cathedrals, government buildings, gardens and museums. "The Kremlin" is also used to mean the Russian government.
"St Basil's is inside." It stands outside the walls, on Red Square.
"You can enter from Red Square." The visitors' entrance is the Kutafya Tower in the Alexander Garden on the west side. The Armoury has its own entrance by the Borovitskaya Tower.
"It is open every day." It is closed on Thursdays.
Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture ends with the bells of Moscow and cannon fire, celebrating the retreat of Napoleon. The bells of Ivan the Great are among those it imitates. In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) the Kremlin is blown up, in the film only.
We searched Russian, Chinese and English sources for this list.
A visit to the grounds and Cathedral Square takes two hours; the Armoury another hour and a half. You cannot go everywhere: guards will whistle you back from the government areas.
You enter by the low white Kutafya Tower and cross a bridge over the Alexander Garden into the tall Trinity Tower. The garden was once the Neglinnaya river, which ran along the wall as a moat. It was put into a pipe in the 1810s.
On your left is the State Kremlin Palace of 1961, a glass and marble hall for party congresses, now a theatre. Ahead is the yellow Senate of the 1780s, the president's office, with the flag on its dome. Visitors keep to the road.
The cannon was cast by Andrey Chokhov in 1586, weighs about 39 tonnes, and has a bore of 89 centimetres. It was never fired in war. The four great iron balls beside it were added in 1835 for show, and are too big to fit.
The broken piece of the bell stands beside it. Russians say the bell that does not ring and the cannon that does not shoot are the Kremlin's two jokes.
Inside, every wall and pillar is painted with saints, on gold. The iconostasis, the screen of icons before the altar, rises in five rows. Here the tsars were crowned and the heads of the Russian church were enthroned and buried.
Napoleon's cavalry stabled their horses here in 1812 and melted down the silver. They took five tonnes of it. The great chandelier was later made from silver the Cossacks took back.
The Archangel Cathedral holds the tombs of the grand princes and tsars of Moscow, Ivan the Terrible and his son among them. Its shell-shaped gables are Venetian, the work of an Italian called Aloisio the New.
The Annunciation Cathedral was the tsars' own chapel. Its iconostasis has icons by the two great painters of medieval Russia, Theophanes the Greek and Andrei Rublev.
The stone palace faced with diamond-cut blocks was built by Italians in 1487–91 for receiving ambassadors. It is the oldest secular building in Moscow. It is seen only from outside.
The Armoury is the treasury of the tsars: crowns, thrones, gowns, carriages, ten Fabergé eggs. The oldest crown, the Cap of Monomakh, gold filigree trimmed with sable, was probably made in Central Asia under the Mongols, in the late 1200s or early 1300s.
The walls were built in 1485–1495, in the Chenghua and Hongzhi years of the Ming (1464–1505), while the Great Wall at Badaling was being rebuilt in brick and stone. The Russian embassy of Fyodor Baikov reached Beijing in 1656, early in the Qing (1644–1912), and failed because the envoy would not kowtow.
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 1147 | Moscow is first named in a chronicle | The Second Crusade |
| 1485–1495 | The red brick walls | Columbus crosses the Atlantic, 1492 |
| 1547 | Ivan IV crowned first tsar | Henry VIII dies |
| 1735 | The Tsar Bell is cast | The Treaty of Vienna |
| 1812 | Napoleon in the Kremlin | The United States declares war on Britain |
| 1950 | The Sino-Soviet treaty is signed here | The Korean War begins |
| 1991 | The Soviet flag comes down | The World Wide Web goes public |
One line to remember: a bell that never rang, a cannon that never fired, and walls built by Italians.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
Sophia Palaiologina is said to have brought the lost books of Byzantium to Moscow, and Ivan the Terrible to have hidden them in a vault under the Kremlin. Searchers have dug for it for three hundred years.
Source: Moscow tradition since the sixteenth century; nothing has been found
Napoleon is said to have waited in the Kremlin for the keys of Moscow to be brought to him, as other capitals had done. No one came.
Source: French memoirs of 1812, retold by Tolstoy in War and Peace
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Last checked 2026-11-12. The Moscow Kremlin Museums' own site (kreml.ru), and figures the State Hermitage gave for Kremlin prices in late 2025.
Checked 2026-11-12
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