by Olga BAZANOVA Four hundred years ago, in 1613, Russian Lands Assembly elected Mikhail Romanov of the Family of high-born boyar nobles to the Russian throne. He became the first czar of the Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia up until the year 1917. To mark this milestone event the Moscow History Museum opened an updated exhibition in what once used to be the Chambers of the Romanov Boyars. We invite you to take a closer look at this unique exhibition featuring so many curios of the 17th century-art masterpieces, glass- and silverware, furniture, fabrics and what not! laid out in posh palatial chambers. The Romanov Chambers lie in the heart of Moscow, within a stone's throw from the Kremlin, in an old district known as Zaryadye, or "beyond the trading stalls", famous for the grand churches of St. George the Victorious (1658), Maxim the Blessed (1698-1699), St. Barbara the Martyr (1796-1804)... This is also the site of the English Podvorye (English Court) we have told you about.* Close by rise the Holy Sign Monastery founded in 1629 with its icon of the Mother of God ("Holy Sign" Icon) revered by the Romanovs as a great holy as well as * See: A. Sotin, "The Old English Court, Its Inmates", Science in Russia, No. 4, 2010; O. Borisova, "Like a Ship Off She Sailed Into Europe", Science in Russia, No. 3, 2013.--Ed. Romanov Chambers. стр. 80 the Fraternity Chambers and a belfry above the cell dormitories. The cloister took in also the Romanov Chambers (affiliated with the State History Museum in 1932*). Back in the 16th century these chambers and lands around with household structures belonged to Nikita Romanovich Zakharyin-Yuriev, a boyar serving at the court of Czar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible). This man, Nikita Zakharyin-Yuriev, was a son of Roman Yurievich, hence the family name of the dynasty, the Romanovs. Mikhail Feodorovich, a grandson to Roman Yurievich, is said to have been born there in 1596--the first Russian cza ... Читать далее