On the palace's southern facade is the Red Porch, an external staircase decorated with stylized lion sculptures on the railings.

Demolished by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and replaced with a canteen for Kremlin workers, the staircase was rebuilt in 1994 at great expense.

In 1487, Grand Duke Ivan III commissioned two Italian Renaissance architects, Marco Ruffo and Pietro Solario, to build a stone palace after a series of fires that had ravaged the then predominantly wooden Kremlin.

The new palace was completed in 1492 and served as the most important venue for formal receptions of the Tsar, coronation celebrations, feasts, and state ceremonies.

It was also within the Palace of Facets that the Zemsky Sobor was held in 1654, resulting in the Treaty of Pereyaslav uniting the Russian Empire with Ukraine.