On 10 June 2022, the exhibition "1872 Peter the Great's Anniversary in Moscow" will run in the state anteroom of the Armoury Chamber. It is dedicated to the Polytechnic Exhibition that became the most magnificent and extraordinary project 150 years ago, as a part of the celebrations commemorating the 200th Anniversary of the first Russian emperor.
The Polytechnic Exhibition became the first pavilion-type exhibition in Russia. It spread over the territory around and within the Kremlin and was astonishing in its scale: it demonstrated achievements in the natural sciences, technology and industry, pedagogy, medicine, taught rational household management, told about history, architecture and art. The Exhibition plan on display in the Armoury Chamber will show the location of the pavilions in the Alexander Garden, on the embankment and inside the Kremlin.
The project of the Moscow Kremlin Museums acquaints the guests with the exhibits placed in the exhibition halls. One can see a photographic portrait of the main "ideologist" of the "Peter's Anniversary" – Sergei Mikhailovich Soloviev, director of the Armoury Chamber and Chair of the Historical section of the Exhibition. On display are also artefacts from the Moscow Kremlin Museums collections, which were exposed in the Historical and Military sections of the 1872 Polytechnic Exhibition.
The pavilion of the Historical section, which was constructed on the embankment of the Vodovzvodnaya Tower, housed about 300 portraits of Peter the Great, from large pictorial portraits to miniatures on snuffboxes. One of them, painted by Johann Gottfried Tannauer, has been welcoming visitors to the Armoury Chamber for many years.
Rarely exhibited glass objects deserve special attention, viz magnificent goblets and beakers with images glorifying the sovereign and his victories. On display will also be one of two Orders of St Andrew that belonged to Peter the Great, who established the award system in Russia.
The role of the Armoury Chamber in forming that grandiose historical exposition of the Military section of the Polytechnic Exhibition is significant – it provided over hundred pieces of arms and armour. Visitors to the exhibition will see two rarest breech-loading rifles (each exists in a single copy) and a 17th-century flintlock harquebus.
Original photographs from the Military and Sevastopol sections presented to Emperor Alexander II will be exhibition's highlight. As the images are on very light-sensitive albumin paper, they will be replaced in a month by photographs showing other views of the Sevastopol and Military sections.