Ivan the Great Bell Tower (Moscow)

Ivan the Great Bell Tower (Moscow)

Description of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower

Belfry of Ivan the Great (a variant of the name - Ivan the Great; also sometimes referred to by the name of the main temple - the Church of John of the Ladder) - a church-bell tower as part of the architectural ensemble of the Cathedral Square of the Moscow Kremlin. Built in 1505-1509 according to the design of the Italian architect Bon Fryazin, in the period up to 1815 it was repeatedly completed, expanded and rebuilt. At the base is laid the church of St. John of the Ladder.

The architectural ensemble of the bell tower consists of three objects: the pillar of the Ivan the Great bell tower, the Assumption belfry and the Filaret extension. It includes a functioning Orthodox church, an exhibition hall of the Moscow Kremlin museums and a museum dedicated to the history of the architectural ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin.

 

History

XIV-XV centuries

In 1329, at the behest of the Moscow prince Ivan Kalita, a church of the “like under the bells” type was built on Borovitsky Hill. She received the name of the Byzantine theologian of the 6th-7th centuries, John of the Ladder, the eponymous holy prince, the author of the doctrine of spiritual ascent and the treatise The Ladder. It follows from the chronicles that the church was built in three months. This gave scientists reason to assume that the size of the temple was small.

According to a number of historians, including Ivan Zabelin, the temple was built according to a vow after the successful campaign of the Moscow troops against Pskov, where the Tver prince Alexander Mikhailovich was hiding.

The Church of St. John of the Ladder is the first stone church with a bell known to researchers, the first pillar-shaped bell tower church and the first church built between two cathedrals.

According to archaeological excavations by the historian Wolfgang Kavelmacher, the shape of the 14th-century temple resembled earlier Armenian temples “under the bells”. The building was octagonal on the outside and cruciform inside, with a semicircular apse in the eastern part of the cross and arches for bells in the second tier. Similar structures have been preserved in the churches of the Spaso-Kamenny and Trinity Boldin monasteries.

The temple had the shape of a relatively regular octagon with semi-columns at the corners. “The diameter along the outer walls along the north-south axis was 8.5 meters. Obviously, the length of the temple along the east-west axis was somewhat longer, but did not exceed 9 meters. The length of the wall gap between the semi-columns ranged from 310 to 360 centimeters. The internal space of the church, excluding the altar, was small and was a space of about 5 by 5 meters. The thickness of the walls of the church varied depending on the specific location and could reach a maximum of 150 centimeters. As for the height of the building, there is no definite data here.”

The first temple of John of the Ladder stood for more than 170 years. It is known that during the reign of Simeon the Proud it was painted and five bells were cast for it.

 

XVI-XVIII centuries

In 1505 the old church was demolished. To the east of it, the invited Italian architect Bon Fryazin built a new church in honor of St. John of the Ladder. Construction was completed in 1508. The construction consisted of three octagonal tiers, in the lower of which a church was consecrated; the bell tower 60 meters high was crowned with a dome (according to another version - a brick tent).

"The same summer [1508] completed the church of St. Michael the Archangel on the square and St. John the eagle under the bells and St. John the Forerunner at the Borovitsky gates, and the master of the churches Aleviz Novy, and the bell towers Bon Fryazin"

The building created by Bon Fryazin turned out to be unique in its strength. For a long time, scientists believed that the foundation of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower reached as deep as the level of the Moskva River. Upon closer examination, it turned out that the architect deepened the oak piles only to a depth of 4.3 meters, while they were placed one on top of the other and covered with white stone on top. Thanks to the conservation of groundwater, the piles are in the water: this saved them from rotting. The diameter of the foundation area is 25 meters. Above the foundation there is a stepped white stone stylobate. The thickness of the walls of the first tier reaches 5 meters.

The Ivan the Great Bell Tower became an example of borrowing the Italian tradition of free-standing bell towers - campaniles - in Russian architecture. The bricks that make up the tiers of the bell tower are whitewashed inside and out. But it was not always so. According to the testimony of the guardsman Heinrich von Staden, the author of the book Notes on Muscovy, in the era of Ivan the Terrible, the bell tower was a “red tower” (perhaps, red unplastered brick gave it such a color). At the same time, the 18th-century Moscow architect Ivan Michurin remembered her painted white.

In the 1540s, according to the design of the Italian architect Petrok Maly, a rectangular belfry was built on the north side of the temple. According to the historian of architecture, professor of the Moscow Architectural Institute Sergei Podyapolsky, Petrok built not a belfry, but the Church of the Resurrection of Christ next to the bell tower. Its construction was completed after the departure of the architect from the Russian kingdom in 1552. The construction of the church was carried out in a "wall-like form" - up and down, which was similar to the belfries of Pskov and Novgorod. In height, this one-domed church was only slightly inferior to the bell tower. The decor of its facades, dissected by pilasters and cornices, resembled the decor of the Archangel Cathedral. The complex completion of the temple is most clearly seen on the “Kremlenagrad” plan of the 1600s: large Italian volutes, keeled kokoshniks, a tent with a small cupola. An arched belfry was attached to the western wall of the temple. In 1554-1555, the throne of the Church of the Nativity of Christ was transferred here from the court of the boyar Ivan Fedorovich Mstislavsky, so the whole church began to be called Rozhdestvensky.

In 1599-1600, Boris Godunov conceived the construction of a grandiose Church of All Saints in the Kremlin, which was supposed to unite the existing Kremlin cathedrals. The pillar built by Bon Fryazin did not correspond to the scale of the planned construction, and the tsar ordered to build a bell tower. The superstructure of the third tier was carried out by the Russian architect Fyodor Kon. The thickness of the walls of the built-on tier was only three bricks. The building reached a height of 81 meters and became the tallest in Moscow, which determined the name "Ivan the Great". Upon completion of the construction, the head and the cross were brightly gilded, under them appeared an inscription of gilded copper letters:

By the will of the Holy Trinity, by the command of the great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Boris Fedorovich
of all Rus', the autocrat and the son of his faithful great sovereign, tsarevich prince
Fyodor Borisovich of All Rus', this temple was completed and gilded in the second year of his reign,

After the death of Boris Godunov and the murder of his son Fyodor by mercenaries of False Dmitry, the inscription was smeared with plaster and restored only under Peter I. According to legend, during the Time of Troubles, at the end of the bell tower, False Dmitry I was going to organize a church for the courtiers of Marina Mnishek. The church, which stood until the middle of the 17th century, is mentioned in the testimonies of foreigners who visited Moscow. The oprichnik Heinrich von Staden and the German traveler Adam Olearius, who made his way to Persia through Moscow in 1634, wrote about her in their memoirs. Between the temple and the bell tower there was a large bell. Nearby was a wooden belfry with another huge bell, cast in the era of Boris Godunov. In the 17th century, the temple was transformed into a four-tier belfry, as the existing buildings could no longer accommodate all the bells. The walls of the belfry were strong, their thickness was about three meters. This design made it possible to place heavy bells on the floors of the structure. The new church was named Assumption after the large bell raised on it. By the end of the 17th century, two chambers were also built in the north-eastern part of the complex: a large one-pillar with a vestibule and a small one standing in front of the eastern facade of the belfry.

In 1624, according to the project of the architect Bazhen Ogurtsov, the Filaret's extension was created. She received a name in honor of Patriarch Filaret, the father of the first tsar of the Romanov family, Mikhail Fedorovich. Under the cornice of the extension there was an inscription about the construction of the building “by decree of Mikhail Feodorovich of All Russia, the autocrat, with the blessing and advice of His Holiness Patriarch Filaret Nikitich”, which was lost at the beginning of the 19th century. The author of the tent of the Filaret extension was the English architect John Thaler, who worked in the Russian state in the era of Alexei Mikhailovich.

Finally, the architectural ensemble of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower was formed by the end of the 17th century. By this time it had become one of the main symbols of Moscow. The bell tower was used as the main watchtower of the Kremlin. It opened up a view of the city and its surroundings, and the approach of enemy troops to the capital could be seen for 30 kilometers. The height of the bell tower was also immortalized in folklore: they said about a tall man "a kid grew up from Ivan the Great." Significant events - the birth of an heir to the throne, the wedding of a new sovereign, military victories - were accompanied by the ringing of bells, which was heard throughout Moscow. Hence the expression "in all Ivanovskaya" - "loudly, at the top of my voice."

Attempts to build buildings higher than the Ivan the Great Bell Tower failed for a long time. In 1707, the Menshikov Tower, 84.3 meters high, was built, but in 1723 lightning struck its spire, destroying the upper part of the building. Subsequently, a legend appeared about an alleged ban on the construction of bell towers higher than "Ivan the Great". Some researchers mention such a decree, but at present this hypothesis has not been documented. Until the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 1860, the bell tower continued to be the tallest building in Moscow.

In 1754, the complex of buildings of the bell tower was repaired under the leadership of Dmitry Ukhtomsky. At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century, a one-story building of the guardhouse with a gallery was built near the western facade of the belfry according to the project of Matvey Kazakov.

 

19th century

During the Patriotic War of 1812 between the Russian Empire and Napoleonic France, soldiers of the French army plundered the Kremlin, including the bell tower and the temple. During the occupation of Moscow by Napoleon's troops, the headquarters of General Lauriston was located in the lower tier of the bell tower. By order of Napoleon, a gilded iron cross was removed from the bell tower, installed a year earlier in place of the cross of the end of the 17th century (from the time of Princess Sofya Alekseevna). The French emperor was going to put it on the roof of the Les Invalides in Paris. According to legend, a flock of crows prevented the French troops from removing the cross. Muscovites believed that as long as the cross stands on the bell tower, the city would not be surrendered to the enemy. Thus, its removal symbolized the capture of Moscow.

During the fire in Moscow in 1812 and the mining of the Kremlin, the Assumption Belfry and the Filaret extension were destroyed to the ground. The bell tower of Ivan the Great survived, but a crack formed on the upper tier. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the building looked "like an orphan".

There was a legend that the cross was taken out by the French from Moscow and flooded in one of the lakes during the retreat. Such a hypothesis was repeatedly encountered in the memoirs of the French military of the Napoleonic era. In fact, the fragments of the cross were found on March 5, 1813 by the synodal sacristan Zosima under melted snow near the Assumption Cathedral. On March 10 of the same year, Archbishop Augustine (Vinogradsky) of Moscow reported this to the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod, Prince Alexander Golitsyn. A refutation of the information about the removal of the cross from Moscow signed "Kremlin resident", which came from a "venerable spiritual person", was published in No. 1 of the Vestnik Evropy magazine for 1813.

After the end of the war, the architects of the Expedition of the Kremlin Building took up the restoration of the buildings. The restoration of the belfry and the Filaret extension was carried out by the Swiss-born architect Domenico Gilardi, designed by Ivan Egotov and Luigi Ruschi. White stone was used to finish the restored buildings, and decorative elements were changed in the upper part of the belfries. A new eight-pointed iron cross, covered with gilded copper sheets, was installed on the bell tower. The words "King of Glory" were carved on the top bar. The chambers in the north-eastern part of the complex, as well as the guardhouses built by Kazakov, were not restored. In 1817, the throne of the demolished Church of St. Nicholas Gostunsky was placed in the third tier of the belfry. In 1849-1852, according to the design of Konstantin Ton, a porch was added to the western facade of the belfry.

In 1895-1897, the Ivan the Great Bell Tower was restored by the architect Sergei Rodionov.

 

20th century

The view of Moscow from the bell tower was considered one of the most impressive and until 1917 was recommended by most guidebooks. At the beginning of the 20th century, the bell tower also attracted the attention of artists. In 1913, the French writer Anatole France planned to climb it during his visit to Moscow, but then abandoned this idea due to the lack of an elevator. Russian avant-garde artist Aristarkh Lentulov depicted it in his painting The Ringing (Ivan the Great Bell Tower) in 1915.

Until 1917, divine services in the church of John of the Ladder were performed daily. During the shelling of the Kremlin during an armed uprising in Moscow, part of the historical buildings were damaged. The extent of the damage has not yet been assessed. According to the memoirs of Bishop Nestor of Petropavlovsk and Kamchatka, the bell tower of Ivan the Great was damaged by shells from the eastern and southeastern sides, many potholes and bullet wounds were visible on the walls.

By 1918, more than 2,000 people lived on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin, citizens of the new Soviet republic, including Vladimir Lenin personally. Living quarters were also located on the bell tower of Ivan the Great.

After the October Revolution, the bells of Ivan the Great rang for the last time on Easter and the Assumption in 1918, when the Kremlin cathedrals were opened at the personal request of Patriarch Tikhon. After that, bell ringing was banned. According to urban legend, in the 1950s or 1960s, one of the soldiers tried to break this ban, after which the tongues of the bells were chained.

In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, from June to September 1941, the command post of the Kremlin regiment was located in the Assumption Belfry. Nearby, inside the Tsar Bell, there was a communication center.

After the war, the church was converted into a museum. An exhibition hall of the Moscow Kremlin Museum has been opened in the Assumption Belfry, where works of art from the Kremlin funds and other famous museums are exhibited.

 

Modernity

The ringing of bells in the Moscow Kremlin resumed on Easter 1992. The bells were allowed to ring after the examination of scientists. First, they were launched on the second, and then on the third tier of the bell tower. In 1993, the largest of the bells, Uspensky, rang for the first time since 1918, but it is rarely used, because the tongue of the bell weighs about 2 tons and needs to be adjusted to reduce the number of ringers. Currently, the bells are made during all divine services in the cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin and during the divorce of the Kremlin guards.

In 2005-2007 the bell tower was restored. In 2008, work began on the museumification of its interiors in the bell tower. On May 18, 2009, the Museum of the History of the Moscow Kremlin and an observation deck were opened in the bell tower, which was timed to coincide with the celebration of the International Museum Day. The second highest belfry in Moscow is Novospasskaja, opened after restoration in September 2017 (its height is 80 meters).

 

Architecture

The ensemble of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower belongs to the ensembles of Ivanovskaya and Cathedral squares, separating them, and serves as the compositional center of the entire Kremlin.

Ivan the Great belltower
The pillar of the bell tower, 81 m high (together with the cross), was built of brick with white stone. The foundation is placed on a continuous field of piles hammered close to each other, above which there is a white stone stepped stylobate. The depth of the base of the bell tower from the modern pavement of the Cathedral Square is 5.2-5.5 m. The composition of the bell tower is based on an accentuated stepping: the powerful lower volumes smoothly pass to the upper ones, smaller in diameter and height. Such a stepped construction of the composition can occasionally be found in the architecture of towers above the crossroads of cathedrals in Italy (for example, in Lombardy). The lightness and harmony of the composition is emphasized by the open arcades of the tiers of ringing octals, which accentuate the transitions between the tiers. Above the octahedron of the third tier is a cylindrical head drum erected in 1600; at its base there is a decor of keeled kokoshniks, between which tongs are placed. These two rows of kokoshniks (the surfaces of the kokoshniks of the lower row are gilded and contain a pattern in the form of golden stars) are an allusion to the covering of temples common in the first half of the 17th century. The drum is cut through by eight slit-like windows completed with pediments. On the cornice above the windows, on sheets of copper, there is a temple-created inscription made in gold letters on a blue background; its three registers are separated by twisted white stone rollers (which were also originally gilded). The pillar is completed by an onion dome made of gilded copper. The original architectural treatment of the bell tower has been preserved, designed to emphasize the tiered composition; a similar technique can be found in Italian campaniles (for example, at the Milanese church of San Gottardo in Corte). A characteristic element borrowed from Romanesque architecture is the cornice that emphasizes the base of the lower tier of the ringing, under which an arcade is placed on brackets. In the decor of the cornice, classic details (droplets, croutons) are combined with gothic ones (three-lobed arches). The upper cornices have a more simplified decor, consisting of three-lobed arches and croutons. Initially, the walls of the bell tower were painted "like a brick", now they are whitewashed.

Due to the large thickness of the walls (5 m in the lower tier, 2.5 m on average), the interior of the bell tower is very small. The lower octagon is divided into two floors; in the higher lower one there was a temple, the upper one was a service one. In plan, the central rooms are octaconchs with exedras; temples of this type were widely used in the architecture of the Renaissance. A feature of the bell tower of Ivan the Great is that the three sides of the western part of the octagon are straight, there are no exedra; the northern exedra also lacks a window, and the temple is illuminated by only four windows. The exedras of the lower floor housed the altar, the deacons and the altar. Both rooms of the lower octagon are covered with octagonal vaults cut in the center by octahedral white stone rosettes; at the base of the vaults there is a white-stone cornice. In the thickness of the walls on both floors there are small chambers with cylindrical vaults, adjacent to the central rooms and having the same height as them. Two staircases start from the chamber of the lower floor: a spiral staircase cut in the southwestern face of the pillar leads to the ringing tier of the second octagon; the straight line passes through the thickness of the faces of the northern part of the pillar and leads to the abyss of the ringing of the lower octagon (in the event of a fire in the Kremlin, the staircase, presumably, was intended for lifting chests with the treasury; from its platform you can go to the central room of the second floor).

The second, middle octagon of the bell tower is significantly narrower than the lower one (due to this, there is a cavern above the vaults of the gallery of the first tier of the bell) and actually serves as a pedestal for the second tier of the bell located at a height of more than 40 m above the ground. This tier can be reached by a spiral staircase protruding into the volume of the wall (due to which the vault of the octagon has complex outlines). The wooden ceiling probably originally divided the middle octagon into two floors; on the lower floor (with niches in human height, into which lookout windows of a round shape open) there was a sentinel service. The ringing of the second octagon has a closed arch, its walls are cut with arches to accommodate bells, and in the center there is a stone pillar with a spiral staircase leading to the last ringing tier. The space of the uppermost tier (intended for the smallest, ringing bells) is empty up to the very head.

 

Dormition Belfry

The current building of the belfry was built in 1814-1815 (architects Domenico Gilardi, Luigi Rusca, Ivan Egotov) on the foundation of the belfry of the 16th century, destroyed by an explosion in 1812. The architects sought to preserve the ancient forms of the lost belfry, which led to the traditional approach to solving the volumes of the new building. In addition to the foundation, the remaining fragments of the walls of the old belfry were used in the construction (by the time of the destruction of which only the first tier of the building of the 16th century was preserved). The general plan of the building stretched from north to south remained unchanged, on the four-tiered volume-pedestal of which there is a three-span tier of ringing. The decoration of the façade was saturated with elements typical of the first half of the 19th century (a gothic frieze of lancet cavities at the base of the chime on the western façade and classic shells above the windows of the third tier, referring to the decorative forms of the 17th century, are typical). The light drum towering above them contrasts with the smooth, arched walls of the ringing tiers. This drum, richly decorated and crowned with a head of gilded copper, is close in scale to the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. The lower faceted part of the drum is decorated with a kind of imitation of the arcade-columnar belt of ancient Russian churches - a two-tier belt of columns with lancet arches. The windows of the upper cylindrical part of the drum are framed with columnar casings. The tiers of ringing are placed above the western part of the main volume, so that a parapet-enclosed ambush was formed above its eastern part. The side spans of the ringing tier, which is almost devoid of decoration, have flat ceilings, and the middle part opens into the cavity of the head drum. Until 1918, the third tier of the main volume housed the altar of the Church of St. Nicholas Gostunsky, demolished in 1817; due to the fourth attic tier illuminated by dormer windows, the church had a greater height than the premises of the two lower floors. The under-dome space, almost in full height, opens into the side rooms with arched openings framed by archivolts. A strongly extended cornice separates the walls from the dome. The general monumentality of the decor of the church premises is characteristic of the Empire style. The tiers of the belfry are interconnected by means of a stairwell adjacent to the Filaret belfry. A high open porch, designed by Konstantin Ton in 1849-1852, adjoins the western facade. It has a drier decor than the belfry, formed by the fly.

 

Filaret's annex

The extension building was erected in 1814-1815 on the site of the original building of 1624, lost during the explosion in 1812, the author of which was the English architect John Thaler; fragments of the walls of this building have been preserved in the first tier. The architectural processing of the facades of the extension resembles the Assumption Belfry, and a characteristic feature is the tent completion. The internal premises of the tiers of the extension are almost identical in volume and communicate with the tiers of the belfry, as well as with the stairwell adjacent to the belfry.

 

Bells

In total, there are 34 bells on the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. The Russian scientist, writer and senator of the 19th century Alexei Malinovsky wrote about the ringing of the Ivanovo bell tower: “When all the bells ring, then everything close to their sounds comes into such a concussion that it seems as if the earth is trembling.” Almost all of them were recast, but retained their historical names. There are three bells on the Assumption Belfry and Filaret's Annex.

The main bells of the ensemble
Uspensky (weight - 65 tons 320 kg) - the second largest after the Tsar Bell of the Trinity Lavra. It is considered the best in tone and sound. It was recreated by casters Yakov Zavyalov and Rusinov (the name of the master has not been preserved) in 1817-1819 from a bell of 1760 weighing 58 tons 165 kg, damaged during explosions in the Kremlin in 1812. The bell is decorated with six high-relief portraits of members of the imperial family and relief icons above them. The name of the sculptor remains unknown.
Reut, or Howler (weight - 32 tons 760 kg) - was made by decree of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in 1622 by master Andrei Chokhov, known as the author of the Tsar Cannon. After the explosion by the French troops, the ears fell off the bell, but thanks to the skillful restoration, its ringing has not changed. In 1855, during the solemn ringing on the occasion of the ascension to the throne of Alexander II, the bell fell off the crossbar, broke through five floors and killed several people. They picked him up and put him in his place.
Lenten, or Seven Hundred (weight - 13 tons 71 kg) - located on the Filaret extension. Made in the 18th century by master Ivan Motorin, decorated with baroque ornaments and sculptural faces of angels.
Bear (weight - 7 tons 223 kg) - the oldest of the bells that have survived to this day. It got its name for its powerful voice and low sound. Cast in 1501 by Ivan Alekseev and poured in 1775 by Semyon Mozhzhukhin.
Swan (weight - 7 tons 371 kg) - got its name for the ringing, reminiscent of a swan cry. It was first cast in the 16th century, during the reign of Vasily III. It was poured by Semyon Mozhzhukhin from an old bell in 1775 with the preservation of the former form and inscription.
Novgorod (weight - 6 tons 880 kg) - first cast under Ivan the Terrible for the Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral. Then it was transported to Moscow and poured by master Ivan Motorin in the era of Empress Anna Ioannovna. The ornament of the bell depicts the apostles Peter and Paul holding a scroll with a view of the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Wide (weight - about 5 tons) - cast in 1679 by craftsmen Vasily and Yakov Leontiev. The ornament of the bell resembles filigree.
Slobodskaya (weight - a little over 5 tons) - cast in 1641, the author is unknown.
Rostov (weight - 3 tons 276 kg) - cast in 1687. It was originally intended for the Belogostitsky Monastery near Rostov. Decorated with images of winged creatures, the inscription on the bell testifies to the simultaneous reign of three Russian rulers - Tsars Ivan V and Peter I and Princess Sophia.

Bells of the second tier
Korsunsky - 1554, master Nestor Pskovitinov, brought from Kherson.
Nemchin - 1550, made by a European master and brought during the Livonian War.
New Assumption - 1679, master Fedor Motorin.
Danilovsky - 1678, master Fyodor Motorin, originally cast for the Cathedral of the Life-Giving Trinity of the Holy Trinity Danilov Monastery in Pereslavl-Zalessky.
Lyapunovsky - 1698, master - stolnik Andrey Lyapunov.
Maryinsky - 1668, cast in memory of the boyar couple Boris and Maria Morozov.
Deaf - 1621, masters Andrei Chokhov and Ignatius Maximov.
The first nameless one is from the 16th century, the authorship is sometimes attributed to Nestor Pskovitinov.
The second nameless one is made in 1687, master Philip Andreev.
Arkhangelsk (XVII century) and nameless bell (presumably XVIII century) - do not participate in ringing.

The third tier is formed by smaller 17th-century bells: Rodionovsky (1647), the bell by Andrei Chokhov (1621) and the bell by Philip Andreev (1687).