In the middle of the seventeenth century the Treasury possessed 150 fine horses for the Tsar's processions, 50 for the Tsarina's, 100 for the royal envoys and 1,000 "specially tended ones" for ceremonial processions.

Krasny(Beautiful) Hall for ambassadorial gifts

      The Armoury, after which the museum itself is called, was first mentioned in 1547. However, specialists believe that it was founded much earlier. It was an important centre for the manufacture of armour, cold steel and firearms. In the seventeenth century an icon-painting and a painting workshops were added. The finest Russian armourers, jewellers, painters and icon painters worked in the Armoury. A foreigner who was able to observe the work of the Armoury masters at the beginning of the seventeenth century wrote:
      "All the Russian craftsmen are excellent, very skilled and so clever that even if they have never seen something before... they understand it at once and can reproduce it as if they had known it from birth, particularly Turkish things: saddle-cloths, saddles, sabres inlaid with gold..."
      At the beginning of the seventeenth century a Silver Chancery was set up, from which a Gold Chancery later split off. They had workshops, known as the Silver and Gold chambers respectively, where the most precious jewellery was made for the courts of the Tsar and Patriarch.
      When the capital was moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg, where large-scale building commenced which required a great number of specialists, most of the Armoury masters were transferred to St. Petersburg on the orders of Peter the Great.

Silver Kovsh(dipper). 17th century

      As early as 1700 the valuables in the Silver and Gold chambers were transferred to the Armoury which in 1726 was amalgamated with the Treasury Court, the Stable Treasury and the Workshop Chamber and became the Workshop and Armoury Chambers. In 1806 the Armoury Chamber was turned into an Imperial Court Museum. Originally it occupied a building (not extant) erected for it by Ivan Yegotov in 1806—13 opposite the Arsenal and the Senate.
      In 1851 the museum collections were moved to the building which still houses them today and was specially erected for that purpose.
      After the Great October Socialist Revolution the Armoury was turned from a court museum-cum-storehouse into a state museum. Its exhibits were supplemented by works of decorative and applied art from nationalized court property, the Patriarchal Sacristy of the Moscow Kremlin, the sacristies of the cathedrals and monasteries, and also from private collections. Thus a collection of exceptional historical and artistic value closely connected with
      Russian history was built up. The Armoury contains the world's largest collection of gold- and silverware from the twelfth to twentieth centuries. It illustrates both the special technique of metal-working in Russian jewellery and also the various stylistic trends. One of the oldest exhibits is a chased silver chalice presented by Prince George the Long-Armed to the Transfiguration Cathedral in the town of Pereslavl-Zalessky not far from Moscow. The chalice is decorated with carvings of saints, including St. George who was regarded as the Prince's patron saint. There is an inscription along the rim.
      The internecine princely wars and strife, the Tartar-Mongol yoke, the nomadic incursions and the foreign invasions naturally did not help to keep the valuables in the Moscow princes' treasury. Comparatively few articles have survived from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. They include items from the so-called Old Ryazan Trove (twelfth to thirteenth centuries). In 1237 Khan Batu laid waste the flourishing town of Ryazan. Nearly all the inhabitants perished, including those who buried in the ground a splendid female attire which probably belonged to the grand prince's family. Apart from the smaller items, the trove contained insignia collars which were worn over ceremonial dress (barmy) and big round pendants for a head-dress fkoltyf. The medallions of the barmy are decorated with fine filigree patterns. On the gold kolty and centre medallions of the bar-mas are portraits of saints including the princes Boris and Gleb. They are executed in the most painstaking technique of cloi-sonne enamel: the outline is formed by thin gold bands soldered on sideways, and the small crevices thus formed are filled with enamel.