The Memorial Cross was first installed in 1908 close to the Senate building inside the walls of the Moscow Kremlin. Three years before, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was killed on the same spot by social revolutionary Ivan Kalyaev who threw a bomb at him.

The front of the cross was trimmed with enamel insets and a quote from the Bible reading “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do!”.

According to the Holy Scripture, this was what Jesus Christ said about his crucifiers. Under the curved top of the cross, the artist put two cherubs and the Virgin of Anguish.

On the reverse side, the cross shows a full-height image of Sergius of Radonezh, the Grand Duke’s patron saint. The cross bears a vertical inscription, ‘In the lasting memory of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich assassinated on the 4th of February 1905’. The cross was bronze-cast, its pedestal dark-green labradorite. An oil lamp was placed before the monument. The cross became the symbol of Christian pardon and penitence.