The Bol­shoi The­ater began as a pri­vate the­ater for the provin­cial pros­e­cu­tor, Prince Pyotr Urusov. On March 28, 1776, Empress Cather­ine II signed the prince the priv­i­lege “to be the keep­er of all the­atri­cal per­for­mances in Moscow” for a peri­od of ten years. This date is con­sid­ered the found­ing day of the Moscow Bol­shoi The­ater. In 1805, the build­ing of the Petro­vsky The­ater was destroyed by fire. The troupe began a nomadic life, per­form­ing on not very com­fort­able pri­vate stages, which posed a great threat to its con­tin­ued exis­tence.

In 1808, a new build­ing was erect­ed for it — the only one built in Moscow accord­ing to the design of the archi­tect Carl Rossi. It was built “like a Greek tem­ple, there were columns around it, in the mid­dle of them there was a gallery along which one could walk around the entire the­ater.” The build­ing, although it stood on a sol­id stone foun­da­tion, was itself made entire­ly of wood. When the Napoleon­ic army occu­pied Moscow and the great Moscow fire of 1812 began, this build­ing was one of the first to burn. Mean­while, two days before these trag­ic events, on August 30, a play was played here — the last, as it turned out.

In July 1820, con­struc­tion began on a new the­ater build­ing, which was to become the cen­ter of the urban com­po­si­tion of the square and adja­cent streets. The grand open­ing of the new Petro­vsky The­ater — much larg­er than the lost old one, and there­fore called the Bol­shoi Petro­vsky The­ater — took place on Jan­u­ary 18, 1825. The build­ing of the Bol­shoi Petro­vsky The­ater exist­ed for almost thir­ty years. But he too suf­fered the same sad fate: on March 11, 1853, a fire broke out in the the­ater, which last­ed three days and destroyed every­thing it could. The­ater machines, cos­tumes, musi­cal instru­ments, sheet music, scenery were burned… The build­ing itself was almost com­plete­ly destroyed, of which only charred stone walls and columns of the por­ti­co remained.

Restora­tion work pro­gressed rapid­ly. In May 1855, the dis­man­tling of the ruins was com­plet­ed and the recon­struc­tion of the build­ing began. And after a year and a half it opened its doors to the pub­lic.