The Bolshoi Theatre after the fire of 1853: what remained of Bove’s design and what Kavos changed

After the fire of 1853, the Bolshoi Theatre retained the load-bearing walls and portico structures of the building erected in 1825 on Theatre Square with the involvement of Osip Bove. Albert Cavos incorporated these elements into the reconstruction, raised the height of the building, rebuilt the auditorium and altered the façades. The building’s apparent continuity does not, therefore, mean that every detail belongs to the same period.

Cavos’s plans and notes, measured drawings and restoration research help clarify this history. They make it possible to distinguish original structures from later alterations and reconstructed details. An exhibition marking the Bolshoi Theatre’s 250th anniversary, which opened in September 2026, also highlights another distinction: the age of the theatre company is not the age of the building it occupies.

Why does the Bolshoi Theatre have several founding dates?

The theatre’s history is traced back to 1776, the first building of the Petrovsky Theatre opened on 30 December 1780 according to the Old Style calendar (10 January 1781 according to the New Style), while the present historic building is associated chiefly with its construction in 1825 and reconstruction in 1856. These dates refer to different things: the institution, an earlier venue and the surviving architectural complex. A study by the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage begins the history of the building on Petrovka Street with architect Rozberg’s design of 1780.

The anniversary takes as its starting point the permission to stage performances in Moscow granted to Prince Pyotr Urusov in 1776. The theatrical enterprise was later run by Mikhail Maddox; the Petrovsky Theatre built for it opened in 1780 according to the Old Style calendar.

The building erected in 1780 near the start of Petrovka Street was destroyed by fire in 1805. The events of 1812 then delayed construction of a new theatre building for many years. When Moscow set about rebuilding its centre, the Petrovka site became part of a larger urban plan. A grand square was envisaged in front of the building: audiences would be able to see the theatre from afar, and the building would form the focal point of the square. This plan is described by the magazine Moscow Heritage.

After the Petrovsky Theatre was lost in 1805, the company performed in other venues; Lidia Kharina, director of the Bolshoi Theatre Museum, also recalls the wooden theatre on Arbat Square, built in 1808 to a design by Carlo Rossi and destroyed in 1812. These changes of venue show why a theatre can be said to have been ‘founded’, but a single address cannot. Returning to its former site in the 1820s required a new building. Even if remnants of an earlier structure were used in its construction, the architectural appearance unveiled to the public in 1825 was conceived for a different urban setting.

Who designed the building that opened in 1825?

Osip Bove worked on the layout of Theatre Square, while several architects contributed to the theatre’s design. In the plan approved in 1818, he determined where the ensemble’s principal building would stand. Andrei Mikhailov took part in designing the theatre building; Bove was then entrusted with construction and revisions to the design. He was also responsible for relating the façade to the open space before it. Construction culminated in the opening of the new building in January 1825.

The Commission for Buildings in Moscow announced an architectural competition in 1816. Its brief required the fire-damaged wall of Maddox’s theatre to be incorporated into the new building. Continuity with the site was thus established before Bove’s involvement: the building programme called for a surviving part of the old structure to be used. The magazine’s editors ‘Moscow Heritage’ cite this competition requirement and report that the winner was Andrei Mikhailov, a professor at the Academy of Arts. His design was considered too expensive and too large for the square.

Moscow’s Governor-General Dmitry Golitsyn instructed Bove to revise Mikhailov’s design. The architect retained its basic composition but reduced the planned building’s height by four metres and changed its decoration. Mikhailov had proposed the original design; the revisions adapted it to the construction budget and the ensemble of the square. The portico now described as ‘Bove’s’ became part of the completed building. Its physical fate after 1853 differs from that of the details destroyed in the fire.

How is lost decoration documented?

More is known about the decoration of Bove’s building than can be seen on its present façade. Art historian Sofia Tsaryova found archival records of the work done by stucco craftsman Ivan Yemelyanov in 1823–1824. For the theatre, he made eagles for the front and rear façades, large wreaths with lyres for the pediment, capitals for the columns and pilasters of the main entrance, and capitals for the rear entrance. The eagles and wreaths were to be made to Bove’s drawings. These documents do not mean the lost ornaments have survived: they reveal the extent of the workshop’s work and identify more precisely the craftsman who realised the architect’s design. The study was published in the 2024 issue of Moscow Heritage.

Tsaryova also examines the decoration of the café installed in the theatre in 1825–1826. Yemelyanov’s invoices list relief medallions, tondi with cupids and ornamental bands on the cornice. Because the decoration itself has not survived, she offers only tentative suggestions about where these elements were placed. For the same reason, she does not claim to describe with certainty the reliefs behind the columns or on either side of the portico. This sets a useful limit on reconstruction: an archival inventory tells us what the craftsman was commissioned to make, but cannot always establish the exact location of every detail after the fire and subsequent rebuilding.

There is also a telling uncertainty surrounding the façade’s best-known allegory. The chariot bearing Apollo that crowned Bove’s theatre has been attributed to various sculptors; Sofia Tsaryova notes that no reliable document identifying its maker has yet been found. This concerns the lost composition of 1825. Sources attribute the present sculptural group, created during the reconstruction, to Pyotr Klodt. The shared subject of Apollo above the portico therefore does not establish that the sculptures are the same or settle the question of who made the original.

This history of authorship is reflected even in the monument’s official name: the state historical and cultural assessment records it as ‘Bolshoi Theatre, 1821–1824, architect O. I. Bove. Restored in 1856 to a design by architect A. K. Cavos’. The document records the two main periods of construction, but the brief register entry does not list everyone involved in the design. Separate records of the competition and construction history confirm that others took part. A 2011 issue of Moscow Heritage gives Mikhailov the Second’s first name as ‘Alexei’, but the Russian Academy of Arts And The Presidential Library confirms his name as Andrei Alexeyevich. The official wording is useful for identifying the monument; to establish its designers, it must be read alongside archival research.

A rare account describes how the lost sculpture above the portico looked. In Panorama of Moscow, Mikhail Lermontov described Apollo in an alabaster chariot drawn by three alabaster horses. Klodt’s present-day group has four horses. This contemporary account helps us avoid projecting today’s silhouette onto Bove’s façade, but it cannot replace a measured drawing or identify the maker of the original sculpture. The difference in material and number of horses provides a verifiable distinction between the building’s two periods.

What survives of Bove’s Bolshoi Theatre?

After the fire in March, the exterior walls and portico columns survived; the interiors and stage area were badly damaged. This is the starting point for any discussion of ‘Bove’s theatre’ within the present building. The surviving masonry made reconstruction on the same site possible, but neither the former auditorium nor its decoration survived intact.

A restoration study by Elena Stepanova in a publication by the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage specifies that Cavos’s reconstruction retained the load-bearing walls, the arrangement of halls and the portico structures on the main and north façades. This describes the building’s continuity more accurately than saying the theatre was rebuilt entirely from scratch. Nor does it mean that every stone on the present façade dates from 1825: the façades underwent later repairs and restoration.

Lidia Kharina, director of the Bolshoi Theatre Museum, dates the columns of the main portico to 1825. She also reports that parts of the walls survived and that the old foundations were reused. Sources differ on the type of stone: Kharina calls it sandstone, while Radio Orpheus calls it limestone. The restoration publication describes them simply as ‘white-stone columns’; without an analysis of the material, that general description is more precise. Construction and repair traces help establish the age of individual sections of the façade.

Preserving the foundations proved both an advantage and a lasting engineering challenge. According to the museum director, the theatre experienced subsidence in the twentieth century linked to its older foundations and moisture. The same physical layer could therefore preserve the building’s continuity while requiring later reinforcement. A visible column can be identified as an element that survived the fire; the age of the foundations cannot be determined from the façade. When tracing the theatre’s history, it helps to distinguish what can be seen from the square from conclusions drawn through measurement and engineering surveys.

The problem of the old foundations restorer Sergei Filatov traces through specific repairs. In 1894, after cracks were found in the masonry, the foundations were reinforced and a scenery store was added to the north façade. A survey in 1921 found that one wall was subsiding dangerously on weak sandy ground; new foundations were laid beneath two curved walls of the auditorium in work that continued until 1929. The lower part of the Bolshoi Theatre thus took shape over several building phases. It incorporates old foundations and later engineering work documented in individual sections.

Who rebuilt the Bolshoi Theatre in 1856, and how did the façade change?

Cavos retained the building’s basic structure and raised it by about two metres. The added storey made room for a spacious scenery hall. The façades acquired detailing characteristic of the mid-nineteenth century, so the Bolshoi Theatre’s present appearance combines its surviving structure with the work of the architect who rebuilt it after the fire. These are the conclusions of a Moscow City Heritage Department research team that studied the plans and the building itself.

The architect could not simply recreate the square’s appearance before the fire from memory. The theatre needed new stage and audience spaces, and those commissioning the work wanted better fire protection. When Cavos received the commission, Nicholas I ordered particular attention to be paid to fire safety. That order does not show that the theatre was free of technical problems thereafter; it explains one of the aims of the reconstruction.

The upper silhouette of the façade changed too. The sculptural group that crowned the earlier building was lost. The Bolshoi Theatre’s quadriga of Apollo, installed during the reconstruction, was created by Pyotr Klodt, whose authorship is confirmed by the Moscow City Heritage Department’s research. From Theatre Square, the columned portico and sculptural group appear to form a single composition. They date from different periods: the columns include structures that survived the fire, while the figures belong to the mid-nineteenth-century reconstruction.

The building’s height changed twice in this story, for different reasons. Bove reduced the scale of Mikhailov’s proposed design to suit the future square; three decades later, Cavos added about two metres to the building that had since been built, to accommodate a scenery hall. These figures cannot be subtracted from one another to calculate the height of today’s façade: the first concerns a revision to an unbuilt design, while the second concerns an addition to an existing building damaged by fire. Together, they show how the demands of the cityscape and the stage changed the architecture in turn.

The difference between the façades of 1825 and 1856 goes beyond the replacement of the chariot. According to Stepanova’s research, the surviving walls and porticoes received new finishes in the eclectic style of the mid-nineteenth century. The added storey altered the building’s overall proportions: the columns stayed in place, but the structure above them rose to a different height. Later repairs and restoration changed the surfaces again. Calling it ‘Bove’s façade’ accurately identifies an important phase of construction, but does not describe everything that now surrounds the columns.

The quadriga makes the distinction between an artist’s original design and a monument’s physical condition especially clear. Restorers described the figures’ copper shells, supports made of cast-iron plates, and internal fixings. During work in the twenty-first century, they chose to keep the group in place, reinforced its frames and replaced damaged parts. It can be called Klodt’s creation, but one cannot claim that every visible piece of copper has remained untouched since 1856. Historical authorship and the survival of original material are separate questions.

What did Cavos change inside the building?

The principal new design was the auditorium. Cavos rebuilt its curved wall, enlarged the proscenium arch, and widened and deepened the orchestra pit. Audiences were directed through three foyers and a system of staircases, four of which led to the upper tiers. The reconstruction therefore changed how spectators entered and moved through the theatre, saw the stage and heard the performers.

Stepanova’s study describes wooden soundboards in the stalls floor, ceiling and orchestra pit, as well as the framework of the balconies and tiers within the brick shell. The beams and columns of the boxes were made of pine, and the auditorium walls were lined with spruce panels. Here, wood was part of the acoustic design, as well as the decoration. Restorers use the phrase ‘the auditorium as a musical instrument’ to explain how the wooden surfaces work together; it does not mean that a single material or feature determined the sound.

The auditorium’s decoration also had a technical purpose. Papier-mâché ornaments were mounted on the pine balcony balustrades. They are considerably lighter than carved stonework. During the 2005–2011 restoration, specialists discovered that some of this decoration had been replaced over the preceding century with plaster, wood and alabaster. Studying the materials enabled them to recreate missing sections while leaving the originals in place.

The three foyers and four staircases leading to the tiers show that the architect had to accommodate large numbers of people. Their layout determined how audiences reached their seats and how they moved through the building before performances and during intervals. The restoration report provides no grounds for attributing modern evacuation standards or precise capacity figures to Cavos; such assessments would require a separate technical study. The verifiable conclusion is more modest, but more important: alongside the auditorium and stage, the rebuilt theatre’s layout addressed the movement of its audience.

The auditorium’s circular brick wall enclosed a timber framework supporting the tiers. Researchers found cantilevered pine beams and columns, pine balcony balustrades, spruce panelling and papier-mâché on surfaces facing the auditorium. This combination of materials was no arbitrary decorative choice. It formed an interconnected structure: the heavy brick shell supported the timber tiers, while the surfaces facing the audience helped reflect sound. The report does not, however, establish the precise acoustic contribution of each panel independently of the auditorium’s shape and volume.

Why can’t the entire present-day interior be dated to 1856?

The auditorium retained Cavos’s spatial design, but it was repaired repeatedly over the following century and a half. In 1928, the wooden acoustic deck beneath the stalls floor was replaced with a concrete slab. The orchestra pit’s structure was altered in the mid-20th century, while the installation of ventilation affected the tiers, the amphitheatre steps and the finishes. The restorers’ report documents these changes and explains why they had to investigate the acoustic design afresh in the early 21st century.

From 2005 to 2011, specialists examined the cantilevers, columns, brick wall and auditorium panelling. They reinforced the surviving timber and recreated missing panels and the acoustic deck beneath the orchestra pit. Since the theatre reopened in 2011, 19th-century material has stood alongside replacements grounded in documentary evidence.

Which later works changed the auditorium?

The ceiling painting has its own history, easily obscured by the word ‘original’. ‘Apollo and the Muses’ was painted during Cavos’s rebuilding, but a publication on the restoration records that it was renewed in 1895; Filatov writes of further retouching in 1913 and repair work in 1942. When specialists examined it in the 21st century, they found canvases that had already been repeatedly reattached with adhesive. Preserving the historic composition and some of the painting meant working with several layers, rather than returning the auditorium to a hypothetical single day in 1856. The dating of the gilding, fabrics and wooden panelling calls for the same care.

Later alterations took place long before the 21st-century restoration. Stepanova identifies repairs in 1874, 1882–1883 and 1895–1896 as important, previously understudied stages in the building’s history. Some were connected with ceremonial events; others kept the theatre in working order. This places a simple limit on how the interior can be dated: a feature may be old yet still postdate Cavos’s auditorium. Without material evidence or documents, the entire pre-revolutionary interior cannot automatically be assigned to 1856.

The replacement of the stalls floor was the clearest loss from the auditorium’s acoustic design. When the concrete slab was installed, the wooden acoustic deck was removed in 1928, which had been built under Cavos. Later, between the 1940s and the 1970s, the volume and structure of the orchestra pit were extensively altered; reinforced-concrete structures took the place beneath its former acoustic deck. These were separate works, carried out under separate projects. They affected different surfaces that Cavos had brought together in the auditorium’s acoustic design.

The ventilation installed in the 1950s also affected the load-bearing structure. To run vertical ducts, builders cut away sections of the tiers’ cantilevered beams near the brick wall and added metal reinforcements. Horizontal ducts required the amphitheatre steps to be dismantled; historic ceiling panels disappeared from some boxes. Restorers later found remnants of the earlier finishes behind plywood cladding. Such technical interventions explain why preserving the historic auditorium involved far more than simply restoring the colour of its walls.

Once later coverings were removed, the original cantilevers, columns and crossbeams came to light. Engineering calculations showed that some elements could no longer bear the required loads without reinforcement. Replacing the timber with metal and concrete was proposed, but the restoration team found a way to retain the historic fabric: they reinforced the cantilevers with laminated plywood, the columns with additional timber beams, and the brick wall with a metal frame. The distinction matters: a strengthened original remains evidence of Cavos’s work, whereas a new element would reproduce only its form.

The spruce panelling was treated differently. Each surviving panel was labelled, removed for restoration and returned to its original position. Timber with similar properties was selected for the missing sections; the report records supplies from Mari El and Germany. The new panels cannot be described as rediscovered originals, although they became part of the reconstructed acoustic system. The acoustic deck beneath the orchestra pit was recreated, and the concrete beneath the stalls floor was replaced with a timber structure. In this way, the team sought to restore the auditorium’s underlying design while acknowledging the difference between surviving and newly made material.

How did the restorers determine what was original?

The restorers studied archival documents and physical evidence within the building. The archives yielded Cavos’s designs and handwritten notes addressed to Nicholas I, as well as contracts and invoices for construction and decorative work. The restorers compared these documents with measured drawings, exploratory surveys, plaster and paint samples, and laboratory analyses of materials. This helped them establish which phase of construction a particular structural element or layer of finish belonged to.

The façade colours offer a telling example. According to archival records, from 1856 to 1881 the walls were sand-coloured, the moulded decoration a deeper shade of sand, and the cast-iron galleries and lanterns green. Examination of the building and laboratory tests confirmed the early paint layers. The colours chosen for the restoration were therefore based on physical evidence and written records, rather than a modern impression of what an ‘old theatre’ should look like.

Measurements establish the geometry of a wall or detail; exploratory probes reveal hidden layers; laboratory samples identify a material’s composition; and archives record the design and those who carried it out. Each method has its limits in isolation. A drawing by Kavos shows what he intended, but does not guarantee that the builders followed it exactly; a layer of paint reveals a colour once used, but without dating it cannot establish who chose it. The restorers compared these forms of evidence before assigning a find to a particular period. Conservation thus becomes a process of testing hypotheses, rather than assembling a convincing ‘historic’ appearance.

It was precisely this comparison that clarified what had happened to the wood in the auditorium. Researchers removed facing panels, parquet and subflooring to examine the concealed beams and supports. The survey made it possible to distinguish surviving parts of the tier framework from later repair inserts. Crucially, the investigation did not require indiscriminate dismantling of the entire interior: visible surfaces and structural elements were recorded and labelled. Preserving the material depended on establishing its location and condition as accurately as possible before restoration.

Uncovering the gilded decoration provided another piece of physical evidence. Fragments of a historic moulded cornice were found behind drapery when panels were removed from the crossbeams. These remnants were used to make templates for restoring the missing sections. The basis for that decision is clear: a surviving example, rather than a stylistic assumption alone. Even so, the new section of cornice remains a replacement and should not be described as untouched nineteenth-century work.

The painting on the auditorium ceiling called for a different set of decisions. The figurative images of the Muses were preserved and restored in place, while the wooden ceiling panels were reinforced. Art conservator Sergei Filatov describes old layers of adhesive between the canvas and its support: repeated attempts to reattach it could no longer hold the painting securely. The damaged background canvases were replaced, while the figurative images were retained. Thus, even where the composition appears unified, its support, paint and background areas may have different material histories.

In the White Foyer, the investigation changed the room’s familiar appearance. Trial exposures revealed blue and pink tones from an earlier painting beneath the ochre grisaille of the 1950s. The later painting echoed the character of the ornament, making it easy to mistake for the older work. Filatov describes how the overpainting was removed after physicochemical analysis, revealing the preserved layer beneath. The case is a reminder that similar designs do not necessarily date from the same period. Choosing a historic colour scheme required examining the boundary between the layers, rather than relying on visitors’ memories.

What can be established, and with what degree of certainty?

The portico’s white-stone columns can be linked to Bove’s building through the surviving material and evidence from the theatre museum. Kavos’s designs, accounts and records document the plans and progress of the reconstruction, while a survey of the auditorium shows which of its structures still survive. An archival inventory of Yemelyanov’s stucco work confirms the commission for specific decorations, but cannot fully recover the lost surfaces. The unknown authorship of the first chariot remains an open question even after studying Klodt’s later sculptural group. These differences in the strength of the evidence matter more than the broad label ‘historic appearance’.

The restoration of 2005–2011 added its own layer to the theatre’s history. A reinforced nineteenth-century bracket retains its old material; a new section of wooden acoustic decking restores a lost function; and the coat of arms on the upper pediment, recreated from archival photographs, restores the image but was made much later. To conflate these results would be to call a surviving find, a structural reinforcement and a documented replica equally original. The conclusion is not that one category is ‘better’ than another, but that each visible part of the building should be understood in light of the evidence behind it.

What does the exhibition marking the Bolshoi Theatre’s 250th anniversary add?

The State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia opened the exhibition ‘More Than a Theatre’ on 23 September 2026; it is scheduled to run until 10 January 2027. Among its architectural highlights is a model of the proscenium with a ceremonial curtain, dedicated to Albert Kavos. The model draws attention to the reconstruction after the fire, although the exhibition extends beyond the building’s history to its performers and productions.

What can you make out when looking at the theatre from the square?

From Theatre Square, you can see the columns of the main portico, the building’s overall form as altered after the fire, and Klodt’s quadriga. These observations offer a starting point for understanding the building’s history, but a glance cannot establish the age of every layer of the façade. Details of the surviving walls, nineteenth-century colours and the construction of the acoustic decking are recorded in the restoration documents.

Two comparisons can be made without entering the auditorium. First, you can compare the columns, which the theatre museum dates to 1825, with the structure surrounding them, raised by Kavos after the fire. Second, look at the four horses above the portico and compare them with Lermontov’s description of a three-horse team: the sculpture before you belongs to a different phase of construction. The wall colour and details of the coat of arms cannot be read in the same way: they underwent later restoration, and the origin of a particular layer must be established through research, not an impression formed in the square.

The Bolshoi Theatre building brings together several periods of construction. Its columns and some of its load-bearing structures date back to 1825; after the fire, Kavos raised the building and rebuilt the auditorium. Klodt’s quadriga and details restored in the twenty-first century show why the visible ensemble cannot be assigned a single date.

The Bolshoi Theatre is included in the standard itinerary for a sightseeing tour of Moscow by car. If you would like a closer look at the façade after reading this article, you can discuss a stop at Theatre Square when choosing your route; our approach to private tours makes it possible to arrange this focus in advance.

Sources

1. Bolshoi Theatre Digital Archive: About the Project
2. Moscow Heritage, No. 16: the history of the Bolshoi Theatre building
3. Mosgornasledie: research and restoration of the Bolshoi Theatre
4. Museum of Contemporary History of Russia: ‘More Than a Theatre’ exhibition
5. Radius: Moscow sightseeing tour by car
6. Radius: private tours of Moscow
7. History.RF: an interview with Bolshoi Theatre Museum director Lydia Kharina
8. Presidential Library: the opening of the Petrovsky Theatre, with dates in the Old and New Style calendars
9. Russian Academy of Arts: Andrei Alekseevich Mikhailov II
10. Presidential Library: the history of the Bolshoi Theatre building
11. Radio Orpheus: what the Bolshoi Theatre’s columns are made of
12. Moscow Heritage, No. 2 (44), 2016: the history of the Bolshoi Theatre and Bove’s design
13. Sofia Tsaryova. Stucco Decoration of O. I. Bove’s Moscow Buildings: Themes and Workshops, 2024
14. State Historical and Cultural Assessment Report for Theatre Square: the Bolshoi Theatre’s heritage listing
15. Mikhail Lermontov. ‘Panorama of Moscow’, published by the Fundamental Digital Library