TROITSKAYA TOWER

Description

Essentials about the Troitskaya Tower in brief

The Troitskaya Tower is one of the most famous towers of the Kremlin. This is due to the fact that most visitors today enter the Kremlin through its gate and that it is the tallest of all Kremlin towers. Including the Soviet Star, which adorns its top to this day, the tower is 80 meters high. However, if you look at the tower from the Kremlin side, it visually turns out to be a bit smaller. This is due to the fact that the Troitskaya Tower stands directly on the slope of the Kremlin Hill. The tower consists of the six-story base part and the 17th-century extension with decorative turrets and quill-arch ornaments made of white limestone, as well as a slender bell tower with a tent roof ending.

The history of the Troitskaya Tower

The exact time of construction of the Troitskaya Tower is not historically known. However, it must have been completed at the latest with the completion of the western section of the Kremlin wall in 1499. The builder was the otherwise rather unknown master builder Aloisio da Milano. The tower got its present name only in 1658 after the Troitskaya Monastery, which was located nearby at that time.

It is known that on the west façade of the tower, until it was raised in the 17th century, there was a larger clock with a carillon, similar to the clock of the Spasskaya Tower, which still exists today. Around 1683 the original clock was dismantled and at the same time the tower, like the other Kremlin towers, received its tent roof extension. Later, a new clock from the Netherlands was installed on the tower, but it was destroyed in a fire during the battles in 1812 against the French and was not replaced later. In 1937, instead of the Tsarist double-headed eagle, the red Soviet star was added to the top of the tower.

The passage gate in the base part of the tower served as one of the parade entrances to the Kremlin as late as the 17th century, partly because there were chambers of the tsar (Terem Palace) and the patriarch (Patriarchal Palace) near the tower. In the War of 1812, it was also the Troitskaya Tower through which Napoleon’s troops advancing from the west entered the Kremlin and emerged a few weeks later during their retreat. Today the Troitskaya Gate can be passed only on foot. The spacious interior of the base part housed the archive of the tsar’s court in the 19th century, today it is used as a rehearsal room by the brass band of the Kremlin garrison.