SPASSKAYA TOWER

Description

Essentials about the Spasskaya Tower in brief

The Spasskaya Tower (Redeemer’s Tower) is the most imposing and significant of all the watch towers of the Moscow Kremlin. With a height of 67.3 meters (including the Soviet Star at its top, it is 71 meters), the tower is the tallest structure on Red Square. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Spasskaya Tower represented the main parade entrance to the Kremlin. Today, only official vehicles are allowed to pass through it.

The history of the Spasskaya Tower

Built in 1491, the tower was originally named Frol Tower after its predecessor tower built in the 14th century, presumably derived from the nearby Church of Saints Frol and Lavr. In 1658, the Spasskaya Tower received its present name due to a decree of Tsar Alexei I. The name was given to an icon with an image of Christ the Savior placed above the tower’s passage gate in 1514. Simultaneously with the renaming of the tower, Alexei I instructed all visitors to the Kremlin to enter the fortress through the Redeemer Gate only on foot and with their heads uncovered. Those who did not comply had to bow fifty times to the icon of the Savior as punishment. This tradition, which even tsars had to follow, lasted until the 20th century.

In 1624/25, the Redeemer’s Tower was the first of all Kremlin towers to be expanded and provided with the richly ornamented upper part, including the bell tower, as well as a spire later crowned with the Tsarist double-headed eagle. At the same time, the Scottish architect and clockmaker Christopher Galloway built the elaborate clockwork for the first known tower clock of the Redeemer’s Tower. With its dial about five meters in diameter, it was considered a masterpiece of clockmaking at the time. In 1709, under Peter I, this clock was replaced by a Dutch one, at the same time the first clock of the Redeemer’s Tower with a chime and a modern 12-hour dial.

The clock, the bells and the star of the Spasskaya Tower

During the war against Napoléon of 1812, when there was a major fire throughout Moscow, parts of the Redeemer’s Tower were damaged, including the clock. Napoléon’s plan to raze the tower to the ground failed, however, as most of the explosives used for the purpose failed to detonate, possibly due to heavy rain. The clock was repaired and finally replaced by the present one in 1851-52. Today, it consists of four dials – one on each side of the tower – with a diameter of about six meters, as well as an extremely complex movement spread over three floors of the tower. The bells, located in the bell tower below the top of the Redeemer’s Tower, strike the time every quarter of an hour and today play the melody of the Russian National Anthem twice a day – at noon and at midnight.

As the most important parade entrance to the Kremlin, it was the Redeemer’s Gate through which all crowned Russian tsars and emperors entered the Kremlin during their solemn coronation ceremonies. Like four other Kremlin doors, a ruby-glass Soviet star has crowned the top of the Spasskaya Tower since 1937. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was never dismantled.