TESTAMENTS TO PIETY

AN ORNATE PORTAL, painted blue and gold, opens onto the nave of the Cathedral of the Annunciation, the czars' own private chapel.

Throughout the invasions and princely rivalries that tore Russia, the Church and the faith it propagated kept the people together. As testaments to this fierce piety, more than a dozen churches stood within the Kremlin walls. The most important was the Cathedral of the Assumption, erected in 1326 and rebuilt in 1479. Here, in Russia's equivalent of Westminster Abbey, czars were crowned and patriarchs and metropolitans were buried; here, among tiers of iconed saints and angels, light blazed from precious stones onto pillars overlaid with gold. The first boyars and bishops to stand amidst this medieval magnificence exclaimed: "We see heaven!"

TIERS OF ICONS, lit by chandeliers, rise above a floor of jasper and agate in the Annunciation Cathedral, scene of royal weddings and christenings.

A GARDEN OF DOMES crowns the ornate Cathedral of St. Basil— actually nine separate churches, connected by vaulted passages.

A DECORATIVE STAIRWAY of stone, gorgeously painted, leads to the czars' fourth-floor living quarters in the Terem Palace.

A FILIGREED CHAMBER, in the Terem, where boyars awaited the Czar, was heated by a tile stove embellished with native designs.