The 10th of October 2024 was marked by the ceremonial opening of the exhibition "Monument to Alexander II in the Moscow Kremlin. The Story of the Creation" in the State Anteroom of the Armoury Chamber. This is the first time that the museum has taken up the theme of the creation of this memorial built with the people's money, which is reflected in the inscription on the gallery frieze surrounding the monument: "Built with the voluntary support of the Russian people".
It took seventeen years to choose a design and implement the idea. The Great Prince Sergei Alexandrovich, the Chairman of the Committee for the Creation of the Monument, played an important role in this. This order must have been of state importance, as the personality of Emperor Alexander II the Liberator, the Great Reformer, was associated with the most important changes in all spheres of society.
At the opening ceremony, the General Director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums Elena Gagarina addressed the guests with welcoming speech.
"We think it's extremely important to tell what the Kremlin was, what it looked like in different periods of its existence, and what it meant to the citizens of Moscow and the country. For the first time in the exhibition we are telling about a grandiose work, the first imperial monument in Moscow, which could not be compared with any of the monuments that existed in the city at that time. Its appearance was determined by the wish of Emperor Alexander III: the monument should be "simple and sacred". We have managed to collect very rare designs, memorial objects, fragments of the monument, which unfortunately didn't exist for long. We consider it very important to tell about this unique architectural work that stood on the Borovitsky Hill in the Kremlin at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries," Elena Gagarina said.
In addition to the commemorative medals and badges issued on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument, the exhibition presents a stone with the inscription in gold letters: "This stone is used to build a monument to the Tsar Liberator Sovereign Emperor Alexander II 15 August 1898". This piece had never been exhibited before and there was no published information about it.