For more than one and a half century the Annunciation Cathedral had been the Moscow Great Princes’ and Tsars’ home church. It was a part of the Great Princes’ palace connected with its ceremonial and living quarters by a stair-passage. The usual name of the Annunciation Cathedral in documents and papers of XVI-XVII centuries was “on the Prince’s court”, “in the Anteroom”, i.e. at the entrance to the palace. The cathedral was set for royal family ceremonies. As a rule, the Protopope of the Annunciation Cathedral was the the Great Prince’s confessor and the custodian of the Prince’s stamp. The home church was also a traditional storage of the Great Princes’ and Tsars’ treasury. From the middle of the XVI century, the northern Porch and the north-western gallery were used for festive entrances to the palace while ceremonial settings for reigning, receiving of foreign embassies, processions on the Holy Day of Entrance to Jerusalem, on Holy Friday the day before Easter etc. Since 1993, every year on April, 7 (March, 25, according to the old calendar), at the Holy Day of Annunciation to Virgin Mary Patriarch of Moscow and Whole Russia Alexiy II holds church service at the Annunciation Cathedral. The cathedral was ceremonially consecrated in August, 1489. it was built by Russian makers in traditions of Pskov and Moscow architecture on ancient podklet of the more ancient church. The today cathedral's outlook with roofed galleries and four corner annexes, its pyramidal silhouette, topped with nine gilt domes, formed in the 60-s of the XVIth century.
Entrances to the cathedral from the northern and western galleries are framed in white-stone carved portals of the XVIth century Italian work. The folding doors are covered with copper plates with Bible stories, executed I n the technique of fire gilding. The floor in the cathedral is exceptional as it consists of silicon plates of various size and colour. The podklet is a monument of architecture of the late XIVth century. it is a quadrangular room under the cathedral's central part, built of large white-stone blocks. In the center of the room there is a massive pillar with low archs, connecting it with the walls. An apse is adjacent to the room's eastern part. The podklet must have been the place for preservation of Great princes' treasury. Since 1989, it houses an archeological exhibition, the exhibits of which are connected with the history of settling of the Borovitsky (Grove) Hill, with unique treasure-troves founded in the XIXth-XXth centuries inside the Kremlin territory. The question of the galleries’ construction round the Annunciation Cathedral is still open. They were probably erected in the early XVIth century by the Italian makers, who had built the palace of the Grand Prince and portals for the cathedral’s northern and western entrances. Large galleries’ archways were initially opened, and galleries surrounded the cathedral from the four sides. The western part of the galleries was disassembled in the XIXth century. Four aisles, erected in the XVIth century over the arched galleries, were single-cupola side chapels with thin walls made of one brick tier. Floors inside were paved with a patterned ceramic tiles, replaced in the XIXth century by carved tiles of white stone with black mastic ornament. The interior was decorated with iconostasises, one of which was placed in the southern gallery. The aisles were sanctified in memory of the cathedral of Archangel Michael and archangel Gabriel at a later date (north-eastern aisle), in memory of the cathedral of Our Lady (northwestern aisle), in memory of the Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem (south-western aisle), in memory of George and Alexander Nevsky at a later date (south-eastern aisle). Carved portals were executed by the Italian makers in the early XVIth century, perhaps, at the time of construction of the new Grand Prince's palace. White-stone walls were decorated with fretwork of delicate workmanship. Images of dolphins, sphinxes, ornamental pattern in the form of vases, lamps etc. were very popular in the Renaissance. Presumably, wall painting of the portals was multicoloured till the XVIIIth century. Two-leafed doors of the north and west portals date from the late XVth – early XVIIth century. The leafs of the door were decorated with golden foil, scenes of the Annunciation, images of the Old Testament prophets and antique philosophers. It is a well-known that the floor made of multicoloured quarry tile was already paved in the middle of the XVIIth century. According to the legend, mentioned in the “History of the Russian State” by Karamzin N., jasper tiles were brought from Byzantium to a cathedral in Rostov Velikiy in the XIIth century century and then transferred to the Moscow Annunciation Cathedral in the XVIth century. Researches, conducted for the last ten years, let the historians consider the very floor to be executed in the Moscow region. The cathedral is adorned with frescoes of the mid XVIth century. Their appearance is connected with restoration works after the Fire of 1547.  They were restored several times. First time, the frescoes were opened from under later layers in 1980-1984, and are the most ancient complex of murals of the Kremlin monuments. Besides the traditional mural compositions, there are images and scenes, unique for that time, i.e. those illustrating the Apocalypse and the Tree of Jesse. Illustrations of Apocalypse, one of the most ancient Evangelical books, cover the northern, southern and western walls of the cathedral as well as the vaults under the gallery. The traditional composition of the Judgment Day at the western wall belongs to the same series. The Tree of Jesse is a genealogical tree of Christ based on Bible texts, which is a key composition of murals of the north-western gallery. The composition is remarkable because of multitudinous depictions of Antique philosophers: Virgil, Homer and Plutarch. The system of murals include images of Byzantine emperors on pillars and images of Russian princes either in the gallery and on. Over the entrance to the northern cathedral's gallery there is a fresco image of Saviour Almighty. The Trinity composition should be marked among the western gallery's ones.  The multi-tiered iconostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral is one of the most eminent, beautiful and miraculous artworks of medieval Russian art. Up till now specialists do not come to an agreement concerning the authorship of its most ancient icons, i.e. the Deisis tier of the late  XIVth century and the Festive tier of the early XVth century. For a long time, they were considered to have been created by Pheophan the Greek, Prokhor from Gorodets and Andrei Rublev. The iconostasis is topped with the Prophetical and Patriarchal tiers, created in the mid XVIth century. The main specific feature of the Local tier of the iconostasis is the permanent place of patronal icon of the ruling Tsar, that was to be transferred to the Archangel's cathedral after his death to be placed on the tomb iconostasis. In the Local tier there is also the icon of Saviour on the throne. The set, framing all the icons, was created on the imperial order in 1896 by makers of the Moscow Khlebnikov Firm drafted by architect Sultanov.