Moscow Kremlin

The first impression is one of overwhelming mass: grey limestone walls twenty metres high and nearly two and a half kilometres long, topped with a walkway and nineteen towers, enclosing a walled city of golden-domed cathedrals, white-stone palaces and the tapering spires of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. From inside Red Square the Kremlin wall feels like the boundary between the ordinary city and something set apart, and even today when the Russian tricolour flies from the towers the effect is of a power that has accumulated over centuries rather than one that was simply proclaimed.

The Assumption Cathedral, built in 1479 under Ivan III and modelled on the Dormition Cathedral of Vladimir, is the spiritual heart of the complex. Its five golden domes and sober brick-and-white-stone exterior give little hint of the interior: a single vast nave topped by a soaring dome fourteen metres in diameter, its walls covered floor to ceiling with sixteenth-century frescoes that were only restored after decades of Soviet neglect and wartime damage. The iconostasis here is one of the tallest and most ornate in Russia, a wall of gilded panels stretching from floor to dome.

The Armoury Chamber is less visually dramatic but intellectually the richest space in the Kremlin, holding the tsars' collection of state regalia, ceremonial weapons, royal carriages and the famous Fabergé eggs presented by the last two Romanov emperors. The collection spans a thousand years and several hundred objects, requiring at minimum two hours to move through without rushing. Photography is not permitted inside, which forces a different kind of attention than the usual museum experience.

The Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon stand side by side in the open air near the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, two massive objects whose symbolic power far exceeds their practical function. The bell was never rung — it cracked during a fire in 1737 — and the cannon has never been fired in anger. They exist as declarations of ambition and technical prowess, enormous enough to make any visitor feel small. The Tsar Bell weighs over 200 tonnes and stands nearly six metres high; the cannon is eight metres long and weighs forty tonnes.

Strolling the Kremlin grounds after the museums close reveals a different aspect: Muscovite bureaucrats crossing the squares, tourists resting on benches beneath the lime trees, and the occasional changing of the guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier nearby. The Kremlin is simultaneously a world-class museum complex, an active government centre, and an ancient fortress, and these three identities jostle for space in ways that are sometimes uncomfortable but always fascinating.

Five centuries of Russian political and religious history compressed into a two-hectare walled compound, with some of the finest examples of medieval and early modern Russian architecture.

The Assumption Cathedral iconostasis and fresco cycle represent the high point of sixteenth-century Russian church art.

The Armoury collection is among the world's most important repositories of state regalia and ceremonial objects.