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MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator...
princess brought the spirit of the great Italian culture to Moscow. It was she who inspired the tsar to build the Kremlin fortress in the Florentine style, the way it is known now: a town of palaces and churches behind the red wall. It was under Sophia that the first hanging gardens and goldfish ponds appeared.However, Sophia's main dowry was the Byzantine emblem - a two-headed, golden eagle from the last emperor's seal, which Ivan III received from his wife. The eagle symbolized independence, and the two heads symbolized power over the eastern and western parts of the empire. The heads had two crowns, which symbolized double power. The Russians admired the mysterious power of the emblem.
At first no one dared to change it, but then Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV) ordered a shield of Moscow's emblem- St. George on horseback, killing a serpent with his spear - to be added on the eagle's chest.
This made the Russian emblem quite
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