In the 19th century, the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal occupied an almost central place in the park ensemble of Tsarskoye Selo. Back in the time of Empress Elizabeth, a hunting pavilion was built in the Tsarskoye Selo grove, which, under Emperor Alexander I, was turned into a small four-tower semi-Gothic castle. English architect Adam Menelas originally conceived it
as one of the pavilions of the park ensemble, and the new castle was first included in the number of living quarters of the royal family. The lower floor of the castle houses two reception rooms, an entrance hall, a hall, an office, a library and a bedroom; in the upper one there is a large hall and several side offices, and in the basement there are utility rooms and rooms for servants.
During the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, known for his passion for good weapons and chivalrous antiquity, this small castle was turned into a kind of armory. Nicholas I began to compose his collection back in 1811, and members of the royal family tried to give the Tsar-Emperor something special. Subsequently, it became a tradition to present the king with trophy weapons obtained in battle. The ancestor of the royal collection was a Turkish saber, taken from a pasha during the Danube campaign and presented to the emperor by General Count A. F. Lanzheron. Then this saber was joined by the trophies of the Persian and Turkish campaigns of the 1820s and the wars in the Caucasus, as well as the successfully acquired weapons in Delhi and Calcutta.
In 1834, the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal solemnly opened its doors, and the appearance of the ancient knight's castle came in full accordance with its internal content.
The enfilade of beautiful rooms began with the "Hallway", which was decorated with knights dressed in armor, creating the illusion of a sentry guard. The first in the lineup was the so-called "Albanian room", which contained the most valuable and unusually diverse collection of oriental weapons with luxurious finishes - Persian, Turkish, Caucasian, Chinese, Japanese …
Two figures of Montenegrins, dressed in national costumes, stood on either side in the vast hall of "Firearms". On the walls of the hall were portraits of historical figures: for example, the glorious 16th century commander, the Duke of Farnese, was depicted in burnished armor with silver and gilded decorations. On top of the armor, he is wearing a leather caftan and a red scarf, to which a dagger for the left hand is hung on the right side. The French “Sun King” Louis XIV is presented in a half-armor gilded with heraldic images, and the Swedish king Charles XII is “dressed” in his usual blue uniform with a yellow leather supervest.
In the middle of the Firearms hall were rifles and a pyramid of shells made at the Tula Arms Factory. Hunting rifles and luxurious pistols made by the most famous gunsmiths of the 18th century were also exhibited here: Zenger from Vienna, Parisian master Lepage, Bute - gunsmith of the Versailles factory.
Swiss and German stained-glass windows of the 16th-17th centuries shone in the windows of the "Empress's Room", there was a canopy bed with curtains and a Chinese satin quilt embroidered with flowers and figures. The bed on both sides was "guarded" by two Maximilian armors. Such grooved armor of polished steel was introduced into use by Emperor Maximilian I in the late 15th century; they constituted the military armament of the German knights until the middle of the 16th century. This armor was worn by Emperor Nicholas I and his son, the future Emperor Alexander II, during the solemn carousel, arranged in Tsarskoe Selo in 1842.
Promotional video:
This holiday was attended by 16 gentlemen and their ladies. The ladies were dressed in medieval costumes, and the gentlemen performed in armor; the younger grand dukes were dressed as pages of that time. A knight's cortege, preceded by musicians and heralds, set out from the Arsenal and, having passed through the park, lined up on the platform in front of the Alexander Palace, where the quadrille began.
On the second floor of the castle, the main room was the "Knight's Hall", which was a regular octagon with high pointed ceilings and high semicircles of windows. Seven equestrian knights in full armor stood on pedestals in full armor around the hall. At the entrance to the hall, to the right and to the left, there are a bronze mortar and a bronze cannon, especially remarkable for its beautiful decorations. Here is Hercules slaying Cerberus; along the outer part of the cannon are depicted the "Judgment of Paris", Mercury overthrown from heaven, Jupiter with his eagle and thundering arrows, engaged in harvesting cupids grapes, as if copied from the famous painting by P. Veronese "The Rape of Europa".
In 1870, the Arsenal was replenished with separate parts of the ceremonial knightly armament, which (according to the assumption of E. A. Kemmerer - the keeper of all Tsarskoye Selo treasures) was ordered in Germany for False Dmitry. These were two bracers and two long legguards, consisting of 14 plates. The armor was made of burnished iron and decorated with etched strong vodka and gilded stripes. The rich pattern of these stripes represents a wide variety of patterns, military attributes and oval medallions, in which there was a two-headed royal eagle, topped with an open crown with five ends, over which a cross rises. Knee pads and elbow pads were also decorated with images of royal eagles.
The large mantles of the armor were made in the form of a fan, extending into the back cover; on both sides they are decorated with large circles with a two-headed royal eagle, surrounded by thirteen small circles. The upper of the small circles contained a long Greek cross, on the sides of which were depicted the instruments of the suffering of Jesus Christ. Twelve other small circles were decorated with the coats of arms of the kingdoms and states mentioned in the title of the Russian emperor.
Exactly the same heraldic emblems were depicted on the obverse of the seal of Ivan the Terrible, which was attached to two treaty letters of 1583 and 1584.
Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, Boris Godunov, Fyodor Borisovich Godunov and False Dmitry used the front side of the large tsarist seal for official documents. Therefore, the heraldic emblems on the armor allowed E. A. Kemmerer suggests that part of the armor was made for False Dmitry - most likely in the last years of the 16th or at the very beginning of the 17th centuries (no later than 1613). This is evidenced by the drawing of the royal eagle, which is crowned with only one crown and does not hold either a scepter or orb in its paws. With the election to the all-Russian throne of the sovereign house of the Romanovs, the royal two-headed eagle was sometimes depicted already crowned with three crowns and always holding a scepter and orb in its paws. And this knightly armor most likely dates back to the "short reign of False Dmitry".