Showcase 1. Artworks from Byzantium, Serbia and Georgia

The art culture of Byzantium, having assimilated the antique and the Ancient Orient heritage, has created its own style influenced deeply the development of Art of the hole Christendom, including Serbia and Georgia. Byzantine jewelers were not comparable with their contemporaries. They masterly acquired many techniques of art processing of metals and stones. Russia and Byzantium entered into trade and diplomatic relations as far back as the Xth century. Having been brought by tradespeople and diplomats jewelry were both received as a gift and purchased by the Russian governors with a great pleasure. These goods have been especially esteemed. They were placed in treasuries, carefully kept and handed down across the generations.

The collection of the Byzantine works of art kept in the Armoury Chamber is not too large. It gives an insight of the Byzantine jewelers' unique mastery because of the period of about thousand years it represents - from the Vth to the XVth century. It includes works of art made of gold, silver and fabrics, decorated with plique-a-jour, embossing, carving, embroidery.

The Armoury Chamber possesses one of the best glyptics' collection created by the Byzantine makers of the XI-XIIth centuries.