Welcome to a slap shot episode of the Russian rulers podcast. Today's episode,

Muscovite Arts and Architecture. I'd like to thank the authors of the book, A History of Russia, in its 8th edition,

Nicholas Riazanovsky and Mark Steinberg, for allowing me to read from their book

because I think it's a very important thing to understand what was going on and how people lived and what was there

in Muscovite Russia just before the reign of Peter the Great.

In architecture, as well as in literature and in culture as a whole, no divide rises between

the Apennage and the Muscovite periods of Russian history.

Building in both wood and stone flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries.

As described earlier, wooden houses of the boyars and mansions of the rulers.

The so-called coromi were remarkable conglomerations of independent units

which usually lacks symmetry, but compensated for it by the abundance and variety of parts.

Outstanding examples of this type of building included the Karomi of the Stroganovs, and Solvichad Gossk and the summer palace of the Tsarves in the village of Kolomanskoi near Moscow.

Furthermore, it was especially during the Muscovite age that the principles of Russian

wooden architecture with its reliance on small independent structural units and its favorite geometric forms, found a rich expression, also in the stone medium,

notably in churches. The Church of St. Basil the Blessed at one end of Red Square

outside the Kremlin wall provides the most striking illustration of this wooden type of

construction in stone.

Built in 1555 to 1560 by two architects from Piskov,

Barma and Poznik. It has never ceased to dazzle visitors and to excite the imagination. This church, known originally as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin consists in fact of nine separate

churches on a common foundation. All nine have the form of tall octagons, a narrower octagon on top of a broader one in each

case, and the central church around which the other aider situated is covered by a tent roof. Striking and different cupolas further

emphasize the variety and independence of the parts of the church. Bright

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