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# The Red Gate: Russia's First Triumphal Arch
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/krasnye-vorota-pervaia-triumfalnaia-arka-v-rossii/
- Published: 2024-11-18T06:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:32:06.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Monarchies, Moscow, Heritage

The Red Gate was the first triumphal arch in Russia. The original, Petrine arch on Myasnitskaya Street was built of wood after 1709, and it burned down and was rebuilt more than once. In Catherine's reign the arch was pulled down and built anew. But under Anna Ioannovna the gate burned once more and was rebuilt in time for the coronation of Elizabeth Petrovna, only for this gate, too, to perish in flames six years later.

In 1757 it was at last decided to resurrect the gate in stone. This time they did not build in the Petrine manner: for the design they chose the version of Catherine I, adorning it with white-stone bas-reliefs, gilding, bronze, sculptures of gods and angels, the coats of arms of the Russian provinces, and painted decoration. In such splendour, now called Red not only after the village of Krasnoye, to which the road ran through it, but also for the richness and beauty of its outward adornment, the gate entered the nineteenth and even the twentieth century.

True, in the nineteenth century the emperors modified the gate a little to suit themselves: they changed the monograms on the façade; Nicholas I ordered the portrait of his regal great-grandmother in the medallion of the central turret replaced with the imperial eagle, and Alexander III removed the eagle and restored the portrait of Elizabeth Petrovna. But as early as the middle of the nineteenth century the city authorities had tired of the gate and began to make attempts to demolish it.

Formally, the gate was declared useless; the city governors said nothing of the monument's uniqueness and even sold it for scrap. Several determined attempts to pull down the arch were successfully repelled thanks to the intervention of the public. So the first Russian triumphal arch crossed into the twentieth century, groaning under constant humiliations, and what came next is easy to guess: the dismantling of all the tsarist symbols, Leninist-Communist emblems fixed to the building, plunder, the destruction of the decoration. In 1926 Alexey Shchusev secured an impressive sum for the restoration of the gate and brought back the monument's former beauty, painting the walls white and restoring the bronze ornaments. Yet a year later it was decided to demolish the gate. Despite every appeal to the value and uniqueness of this monument of the Annenian-Elizabethan Baroque, despite declarations of its unquestionable historical significance, the arch never received the status of a protected monument, and in the summer of 1927, during the widening of the Garden Ring, the Red Gate was destroyed beyond recall.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_14233@18-11-2024_09-30-00.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_14234@18-11-2024_09-30-00.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_14235@18-11-2024_09-30-00.jpg)