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PLACE OF THE BROW
1534
It was from here that decrees and important announcements were proclaimed, the tsars and patriarchs addressed the people, and religious services and official ceremonies were held.
Foreign travellers in describing the unusual beauty of the Intercession Cathedral invariably mentioned the nearby circular stone dias, calling it a "rostrum".
Recent discoveries by specialists have made it possible to restore the original appearance of the circular dias in the middle of the Place of the Brow, the so-called ambo, which is the oldest section of the monument. It was built in the sixteenth century of tightly packed blocks of hewn white marble. And the whole platform was originally made of brick. In earlier times it had a wooden gate which was bolted. Some historical sources say there was a canopy or awning over it. The post supporting this would probably have stood in the middle of the ambo.
After the capital was moved to St. Petersburg in 1712, the importance of the Place of the Brow as a centre of solemn festivities declined. Now only religious rites were held here.
A plan has survived of the Place of the Brow by the eminent Russian architect Dmitry Ukh-tomsky, who was entrusted with the task of repairing the monument in the mid-eighteenth century. These repairs were not carried out until the end of the century, however, and not by Ukhtomsky, but by his pupil Mat-vei Kazakov, also a famous architect. He rebuilt the Place of the Brow, faced it with white marble and made a balustrade. Kazakov replaced the wooden entrance gate with a patterned one of wrought iron. Subsequently this historical monument was restored many times.
Quite recently Soviet restorers removed the nineteenth-twentieth-century deposits, and today we see the monument in the form which it was given by Matvei Kazakov in 1783.
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