Sprawled along the crest of Moscow's Pskov Hill on Varvarka Street stands a curiously picturesque building awash in whites and blues, crimsons and greens, a riot of ornately carved window and door surrounds, with a canopied exterior staircase and a steep, multi-colored roof topped with intricate ironwork. It looks like some medieval fantasy, a smaller sibling to the Yusupovs' flamboyant Muscovite mansion. Both buildings are rooted in the 15th Century; both seem to whisper evocatively of a time long past, of the tumultuous rule of Ivan the Terrible and a court filled with caftan-draped boyars engaged in conspiratorial intrigues.
The mansion on Varvarka Street has never attracted many foreign visitors, not even those with a passionate interest in the former ruling Dynasty. Yet before they built the fantastic wooden palace at Kolomenskoye or enlarged the Kremlin; before they erected their baroque, rococo, and neoclassical palaces in St. Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo, or Peterhof – before they even ruled Russia – it was here that the Romanovs lived, consolidated their power and influence, and rose to the prominence and prestige that eventually led to a sixteen-year-old boy's election to the dangerously unstable throne. This was the house of the Romanov boyars, a place steeped in legend and history.
The Romanov Chambers, or Palata, wasn't even built by the Romanovs. In the 1540s, the houses – for there were two, the main residence and an auxiliary structure – along with a garden and the Chapel of the Sign of the Most Holy Mother of God came to be owned by Nikita Romanovich Zakharyin-Yuriev, whose grandson was to become Tsar Michael; indeed, it is often claimed – though unproved – that it was here that Michael was born in 1596. Precisely how Zakharyin-Yuriev got the estate remains a bit of a mystery. It is possible that the property was a reward after Anastasia Romanova Zakharyin married Ivan the Terrible.1
Whatever benefits the Zakharyin-Yuriev family reaped through the marriage of their daughter to the unstable Tsar soon dissipated in the wake of his death. Boris Gudunov saw them as prime rivals to the throne. He forced Feodor Nikitich – the first member of the family to bear the surname of Romanov – to take vows as a monk (he later became Patriarch Filaret), seized the mansion on Varvarka Street, and declared that the Romanovs were enemies of the state.2 And so, after less than fifty years of ownership, the Romanovs lost the mansion. No one would ever live in it again.
After young Michael Romanov was elected to the throne in 1613, the house where he had supposedly been born suddenly assumed a renewed importance. In 1629, Michael ordered that the Znamensky Monastery be built in the former garden; the mansion was to be preserved as part of the complex. The old chapel was enlarged and became a cathedral. Then, in 1668, a devastating fire swept through parts of Moscow. The buildings of the monastery complex were greatly damaged, though the complex was quickly rebuilt and restored. As part of this program, the Miloslavsky boyars – whose daughter Maria was Tsar Alexei's first wife – undertook restoration of the Romanov Chambers.3
The effort was noble, though probably conceived as a means of retaining their influence after Maria died in 1669. But the results fell far short of anything approaching a “restoration.” Architect Michael Alekseev left only the whitewashed stone basement foundation of the main residential building intact. Using brick, he built two new stories atop the basement, tripling the structure's size. An ornate canopied porch was introduced, and the exterior staircase enlarged. As a final touch, Alekseev dotted the walls with carved stone lintels and twisted columns, and crowned the building with a steep, multicolored checkerboard roof decorative with ironwork.4
Over the years, the Znamensky Monastery fell into some disrepair. In 1743, the remaining buildings of the monastery were destroyed by yet another fire. The roof of Alekseev's reconstructed Romanov Chambers collapsed, and the walls were charred. Empress Elizabeth ordered that the building be repaired, though once again there was little attempt at an authentic restoration. Once the work was finished, the Chambers were rented out, first to the Orthodox Church and later to several merchants.5
The frequent changes in occupancy, as well as general disinterest on the part of officials, gradually led to rot and disintegration. By 1821, the structure was in such poor condition that the government proposed tearing it down. But it had a historic significance, the birthplace of the first Romanov Tsar, and protests against the planned destruction saved it. The government allocated only the funds necessary to repair the basic building; no effort was made to restore it to either its original appearance or to the form left by Alekseev.
The situation finally changed in 1856, when Alexander II ordered that the mansion be completely restored to its original appearance, although once again officials had a fluid definition of precisely what “restoration” meant. A commission of archaeologists was appointed to study the existing structure and clear away previous architectural work and décor. This uncovered interior staircases that had been walled up; bricked up passages; and hidden windows.6
Architect Feodor Richter was charged with “recreating” the Chambers according to both the few remaining structural and artistic clues as well as paintings showing other medieval buildings and their interiors. Richter rebuilt the two stories that had once topped the cellar basement, using a combination of stone and brick; a smaller additional story, in imitation of a medieval Terem, topped a portion of the main block. The exterior staircase was widened, and a new porch, crowned by a medieval-style roof, was added to give access to the first floor, while a tower rose on the opposite side. An upper gallery fringed one side of the structure, forming an additional passageway. The old foundation was whitewashed; above this, the façade of the first floor was adorned with a vibrantly painted imitation of the exterior decoration of the Kremlin’s Palace of Facets. To provide a contrast, the second story was whitewashed, while the Terem and assorted galleries were executed in ochre-colored stone. New square, rounded, and arched windows copied medieval mica prototypes, and were framed by carved columns and surrounds. To complete the picturesque effect, Richter topped the building with a variety of steep metal roofs that emulated medieval Muscovite models. As a final touch, the roof of the tower was crowned with a weathervane in the form of a gilded griffin.7
Except for the cellar, with its low-ceilinged rooms, the interior was completely changed. New oak floors were laid, and piers supported the vaulted ceilings. Swiss-born Giuseppe Atari and Russian Anatoli Fedyev were commissioned to paint many of the rooms according to medieval models in the Kremlin’s Terem Palace, a mixture of foliate and animal designs in a variety of rainbow colors; new carved cornices wrapped ceilings, and tiled stoves were either restored or recreated. The finished rooms were furnished with pieces copied both from the Terem Palace and from the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, where the sixteen-year-old Michael Romanov had sought refuge and where the delegation of Moscow boyars had offered him the throne.8
Construction and decoration were finished by August 1859, when Alexander II formally dedicated the structure as the Chambers of the Romanov Boyars. Members of the upper classes were allowed to tour the interior, although admittance for others seems to have been restricted. Within, visitors could admire the elaborately decorated rooms, and a number of items that had belonged to the early Romanovs were displayed in cabinets for the curious to examine.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, the former Romanov mansion was stripped of its relics of the former dynasty and renamed The Museum of Boyar Life. Authorities filled its rooms with furnishings and artifacts collected from other museums and galleries. In 1923, it was transferred to the State Museum of Decorative Arts as a branch of the Kremlin Armory, and a decade later was designated as a repository for medieval cast-offs from the State Historical Museum.10
At the start of World War II, the museum was closed, and its collection of artifacts moved to storerooms. The building itself was leased to several organizations, who occupied it throughout the hostilities. Given the conflict, almost no maintenance was done, and the structure deteriorated from lack of heat. In 1951, the Soviet Government decided to restore the structure again – the third major renovation on the building since the 1660s. Architects Ivan Makovetsky and Irina Sakharova received a commission which called for the removal of many of the “false interior details” added in the Nineteenth Century, including carved ornament and extensive wooden paneling which had been used to adorn the walls. But intense arguments erupted when it came to the interior paintings done during Richter’s work in the 1850s. The initial thought was to also classify them as “false interior details” and simply whitewash the walls. Things became so contentious that the government appointed a special commission to study the issue. Architect Dmitri Sukov railed against “the false restoration of 1859,” and insisted that fabrics be removed from the walls, the tiled stoves taken out, and the painted decoration “destroyed.” Contrary to this, Sukhov’s fellow architect Alexander Korin argued that the decoration should be kept: “Richter’s restoration,” he said, “is a link in the history of Russian architecture of the Nineteenth Century. Both the vaults and the paintings should be preserved, not in memory of the Romanovs or Richter, but as representative of a certain stage of Russian restoration, from which a whole school of Russian restoration developed.” Another expert insisted that Richter and the artisans employed in the Nineteenth Century “had better access to historical models than our current restorers do. They cannot replicate to the standard that Richter did.”11
In the end, an uneasy compromise was worked out: the painted walls in most of the rooms were covered with new papers pasted over the existing decoration. This was not an ideal solution: the paste used affected the integrity of the paintings covered and would cause considerable difficulties for the next restoration. A new interior staircase was built, and the windows were reglazed. In 1963, the building was reopened as the Auxiliary Exhibition Halls of the State Historical Museum.12
Over the next half-century, the former Romanov Boyar Chambers underwent extensive renovation and restoration several times. In the 1970s further restoration of the interiors was done, though this amounted more to preservation efforts than to any significant alteration of the structure. But starting in 1984, and lasting for the next seven years, the former Romanov Chambers received its most extensive and considered restoration in more than a century. Placed in charge of the project, architect Ivan Kazakevich undertook extensive archaeological surveys, especially in the cellar portions of the buildings, which revealed some original columns and details that had been hidden for centuries. In the interiors, the guiding principle was to restore everything that Richter had done. Kazakevich stripped out the earlier work of the 1950s. The paper glued over the Nineteenth Century paintings was carefully stripped away, although inevitably the work of Atari and Fedyev had suffered damage from the paste used. Despite the slow and methodical approach, peeling away the paper also peeled away large portions of the painted plaster underneath. Finally, in an attempt to preserve as much of the Nineteenth Century decoration as possible, syringes filled with solvent were used to reach beneath the papers and loosen them from the plaster. This was done inch by inch and took two years. Only then was it possible for artists to begin restoring the painted decorations. This took another two years. Finally, the exterior of the first floor once again was painted in its distinctive faceted design and the plating of the roofs replaced.13
As it stands today, the Romanov Chambers is a unique if somewhat historically questionable building, but one that embodies within its walls the spirit, if not the actual truth, of the lives of the boyars who spawned a great dynasty. The cellars are now divided into several museum rooms, with displays of medieval arms and armor, portraits of the Romanovs, and a model of the Chambers. A staircase ascends to the first floor, where the principal rooms are located. These rooms were reserved exclusively for the men: women were confined to the top floor, echoing the social and gender divisions of the Muscovite court and the cloistered world in which noble ladies were forced to live.
The first floor contains the Refectory, the Study, the Library, the Room for the Boyar’s Sons, and several small rooms which served as bedrooms for the men. The largest of the rooms in the so-called Men’s Half is the Refectory. This served not only as a dining room but also as a reception room and general gathering place, a sort of parallel to the Great Hall in British country houses. Typical of the mansion, the vaulted ceiling is rather low and the small, rounded windows of mica, some fitted with panes of colored glass, keep the Refectory in a perpetually dim state. The walls are covered with alternating strips of pink and gold brocade woven with floral designs; the vaults and the ceiling are painted with floral and foliate designs, griffins, and Romanov coats-of-arms framing the initials MFR for Michael Feodorovich Romanov. A large table surrounded by carved chairs stands at the center of the room, atop a floor of oak boards and beneath a silver chandelier from Sweden. Shelves and cabinets around the walls hold a collection of medieval porcelain and dishes.
The Adjoining Study is a small, vaulted room. The walls are upholstered in embossed Flemish leather while the ceiling is deliberately unadorned and treated with a simple whitewash. Chests and cases hold a collection of medieval books. A small desk, set with a writing set including a goose quill pen, stands in one corner. The room’s most notable feature is the large, tiled stove, which also provided heat for the Refectory.
The walls of the Library are covered in green cloth. Several arched niches around the room served as bookshelves; the most valuable books were stored in oak chests. It is a small room, but when the Romanovs occupied the Chambers, they owned less than 300 books, mainly in Russian, Polish, German, and Latin. As in the Study, a tiled stove dominates one corner.14
The Room for the Boyar’s Sons served as a combination classroom, sitting room, and reception room. Until the age of five, boys lived with their mothers on the upper floor, but were moved to the lower floor to begin instruction. The room is perhaps the least adorned in the entire building. The ceiling is of whitewashed limestone, with walls hung with blue fabric and a simple floor of oak boards. Tables and chests hold a collection of books on arithmetic, writing, and religion, and there are several early scientific instruments, including compasses and a globe of the world imported from Venice.
A narrow staircase leads from the Refectory to the upper floor and the Women’s Chambers. This was the only way to reach their rooms. It was designed in such a manner for two reasons: to isolate them from the men, and to make it easier to protect them should the building be attacked. This lone means of access effectively meant that the women could leave their floor only with the knowledge of the men in the Refectory.
At the top of the staircase, a small vestibule opens to an exhibition of sarafans, coats, and jewelry typically worn by medieval Muscovite women. The Upper Floor contained not only sleeping quarters but also several large rooms, including the Room of the Boyarina and the Svertlitsa. The first served as a sitting and dining room. The walls are covered with wooden panels laid in contrasting patterns. Numerous windows, larger than those on the floors below, ensure that the room is filled with light. The furnishings are simple: oak tables and chairs, chests, and benches. It was here that boys born into the family were brought up until the age of five, when they were sent to the men below. An assortment of wooden toys stands next to the stove, faced in green tiles decorated with images derived from Russian folk tales.
The Svetlitsa is the largest of these upper rooms, and also the brightest with its multiple windows. This was a workroom for the women, the place where they spent their days sewing and embroidering. In keeping with this activity, some medieval spinning wheels, and looms, along with examples of early needlework and woven fabrics, are now displayed here.
The restored Romanov Chambers is a mansion of picturesque details and colorful façades, ornately adorned with pseudo-medieval carvings and ornament. Because it underwent so much destruction, and so many renovations, it is impossible to view it as an accurate representation of what the early Romanovs knew. Like the Yusupov Chambers across the city, it is a bit of historical fantasy with low vaulted ceilings, narrow windows, thick walls, and dark passages that twist through the building and evoke the Moscow of Ivan the Terrible.
Source Notes
1. Shchutskaya, Dom boyar Romanovykh, 26-28; Shchutskaya and Tregubova, 5-7.
2. Shchutskaya, Palaty boyar Romanovykh, 7-9.
3. Ibid., 9-10.
4. Murrell, 30.
5. Shchutskaya, Palaty boyar Romanovykh, 10-12; Shchutskaya and Tregubova, 15-21.
6. Shchutskaya and Tregubova, 22-26; Shchutskaya, Dom boyar Romanovykh, 42-44.
7. Shchutskaya, Dom boyar Romanovykh, 25-31; Shchutskaya and Tregubova, 36.
8. Murrell, 30; Shchutskaya, Dom boyar Romanovykh, 52-56; https://blog.mediashm.ru/?tag=palaty-boyar-romanovyx.
9. Shchutskaya and Tregubova, 42-53; Shchutskaya, Dom boyar Romanovykh, 52; Shchutskaya, Palaty boyar Romanovykh, 14-16.
10. Shchutskaya, Dom boyar Romanovykh, 61-66; Shchutskaya and Tregubova, 59-67; Shchutskaya, Palaty boyar Romanovykh, 21.
11.
https://blog.mediashm.ru/?tag=palaty-boyar-romanovyx
; Shchutskaya, Dom boyar Romanovykh, 72-76; Shchutskaya, Palaty boyar Romanovykh, 24.
12. Shchutskaya and Tregubova, 64-72;
https://blog.mediashm.ru/?tag=palaty-boyar-romanovyx
; Shchutskaya, Palaty boyar Romanovykh, 24-26.
13.
https://blog.mediashm.ru/?tag=palaty-boyar-romanovyx
; Shchutskaya, Palaty boyar Romanovykh, 26-27.
14. Shchutskaya, Dom boyar Romanovykh, 87-93; Shchutskaya, Palaty boyar Romanovykh, 26-28.
Bibliography
Murrell, Kathleen Burton. Moscow: History, Art and Architecture. London: Flint River Press, 2000.
Shchutskaya, G. Palaty boyar Romanovykh. Moscow: State Historical Museum, 2012.
Shchutskaya, G. Dom boyar Romanovykh. Moscow: Moskvovedeniye, 2014.
Shchutskaya, G. and E Tregubova. Palaty boyar Romanovykh kontsa XV-XVII vekov. Moscow: State Historical Museum, 2007.
https://blog.mediashm.ru/?tag=palaty-boyar-romanovyx