Legends surrounded the art pieces from the Kremlin collection for hundreds of years. In the early 19th century, the ideas of the Romanticism and an overwhelming interest to the national history drove the amateurs of antiquities to reconsider the pre-existing myths and, following a creative urge, to invent the new ones. The romantic approach towards history presumed the artistic presentation of the facts. At the same time, the works of historians of the first half of the 19thcentury and their critics gave a strong impulse to the development of historical science.

It was during the Romantic era, when the ancient artifacts of the Armoury Chamber, connected to the crucial events in the national history, were being studied and published. Along with this, many of them acquired false attributions that were to underline their link to prominent Russian rulers and other outstanding personalities. Thus, in the museum collection "appeared" the staffs of Grand Princes Andrey Bogolubsky and Ivan Kalita, helmet of Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky, child’s armour of Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy, chain armour of Martha the Mayoress, mace of Marina Mniszech, though all these items had practically nothing to do with the mentioned figures of Russian history. The works of the researches and authors of the guidebooks to the Armoury Chamber played the key role in this process. For the 19th century, some authors disproved the others and in the meanwhile suggested equally brave versions of items' origin.

The exhibition tells about the patriotic rise of the early 19th century, caused by the Napoleonic Wars, about the increasing interest to the Middle Ages, the creators of myths, and the first researchers of the Kremlin collection. The first part of the display dips into the atmosphere of Russian Romanticism, which allows looking at the Armoury Chamber in the context of an epoch. The second hall is dedicated to the legends referring to different historical objects, such as the legend about "the Monomachos's gifts" and the fantastic weapons that, in the 19th century, people tried to reconstruct and correlate to various historical terms.