Cathedral of the Archangel

Step out of the sunlight on Cathedral Square and into the cool, dim interior. The air smells faintly of old stone and candle wax. Your eyes need a moment to adjust. Then the walls appear, covered from floor to vault in painted figures. Many of them stand in long rows, robed and haloed, looking straight back at you. Below them, low stone tombs sit in quiet lines across the floor. This is the Cathedral of the Archangel, and you are standing among the rulers of medieval Moscow.

The cathedral is dedicated to the Archangel Michael, the leader of the heavenly armies in Christian tradition. For Moscow's princes, Michael was a fitting patron. He was a warrior, and he was also believed to guide souls after death. Both roles matter here. For roughly two centuries, this building served as the official burial church of the grand princes and tsars of Moscow. Every grave in this room belongs to a ruler or a close member of a ruling family.

A church to the Archangel stood on this spot long before the present building. An earlier stone church was raised here in the fourteenth century, when Moscow was still one principality among many. By the end of the fifteenth century, Moscow had grown into the centre of a much larger state. Grand Prince Ivan the Third wanted a Kremlin to match that new power. He rebuilt its walls and its main churches, and he looked abroad for the skills to do it.

Here is the first surprise. The architect of this Russian royal necropolis was an Italian. Russian sources call him Aleviz the New, and he is usually identified with an Italian master named Aloisio. Work began in 1505, the same year Ivan the Third died. The cathedral was finished in 1508, under his son Vasily the Third. So the father commissioned the church, and the son completed it.

When you return outside, look closely at the walls, because the Italian hand shows clearly there. The building has the familiar Russian shape — a cube of walls topped with five domes. But the details come from Renaissance Italy. Flat pilasters divide the walls into neat sections. Classical cornices run around the building. And the rounded gables at the roofline hold large carved scallop shells, a motif that many visitors link with Venice. Nothing like this existed in Moscow before.

That mixture made the building unusual in its own time. Its neighbour across the square, the Cathedral of the Assumption, was also designed by an Italian. Yet that architect followed older Russian models closely. Aleviz went further. He brought the decoration of an Italian palace to the most solemn church in Moscow. Some later Russian builders copied his shell gables on their own churches, so his ideas spread well beyond the Kremlin walls.

Now look down again at the tombs around you. There are around fifty burials in this cathedral. They include Ivan the Third and Vasily the Third, as well as earlier princes whose remains were moved here from the old church. Most tombs are simple rectangular stone forms. In the early twentieth century, many were covered with bronze cases and glass, which you can still see. Each one carries an inscription naming the person buried below.

The most famous grave lies apart from the others. Ivan the Fourth, known to history as Ivan the Terrible, rests in a small side area behind the iconostasis, the tall screen of icons at the front. His two sons lie near him. One of them, the heir Ivan, died after his father struck him in a rage. That story is widely told and appears in older accounts, though the exact details are still debated. Ivan's tomb is often visible only through an opening, not up close.

Here is a second surprise. In the 1960s, Soviet scientists opened several tombs in this cathedral, including the tomb of Ivan the Terrible. They studied the bones and the condition of the remains. A well-known Soviet anthropologist even reconstructed Ivan's face from his skull. Those reconstructions are why many modern books show a heavy-jawed, stern face for the tsar. The research also raised questions about his health and possible poisoning that historians still discuss.

One grave here has a canopy over it. It belongs to Tsarevich Dmitry, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible. The boy died young in the town of Uglich, and his death caused great political trouble. Several pretenders later claimed to be Dmitry, and Russia fell into years of disorder known as the Time of Troubles. His remains were brought to this cathedral in the early seventeenth century, and the Church honours him as a saint.

Now lift your eyes to the walls. The frescoes you see date mainly from the middle of the seventeenth century. They replaced older paintings that had decayed. The painters included figures of the princes buried here, so the dead appear above their own graves. These are not true portraits. They follow fixed traditions of icon painting. Still, the effect is powerful — a painted family of rulers watching over its own tombs.

The cathedral lost its role as a burial church when Peter the Great moved the capital to Saint Petersburg in the early eighteenth century. After that, Russian emperors were buried in the new capital. There is one exception. Peter the Second, the young grandson of Peter the Great, died in Moscow in 1730. He was buried here, the last ruler to join this company. Later, during the French occupation of 1812, the Kremlin churches were looted, and this building suffered too.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment near the doorway. Notice how small and close the space feels compared with the grand title of the building. Listen to the soft shuffle of feet on the floor and the low voices around you. When you step back outside, turn and look up at the scallop shells on the gables. They were carved by Italian hands for Russian kings, and they still catch the light over Cathedral Square.