The Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower (formerly Timofeevskaya) is a tower of the wall of the Moscow Kremlin. It is located on the east side, above the Beklemishevskaya tower. It was built in 1490 by the Italian architect Pietro Antonio Solari (Peter Fryazin) on the site of the Timofeevsky Gates of the white-stone Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy.
Pyotr Fryazin built the tower in 1490 on the site of the Timofeevsky
Gates, it became his fifth Kremlin tower. Until the end of the 15th
century, it was called according to an old habit. In the Spiritual
Charter of 1498, the tower was still listed as "Timofeevsky Gate". These
gates, in turn, were named after the governor Dmitry Donskoy - Timofey
Vorontsov-Velyaminov. Back in 1380, Dmitry Donskoy rode through this
gate to the Battle of Kulikovo. In the Kremlin inventory of 1476, made
after another fire, the tower is listed under the old name: "Timofeevsky
Gate and the great prince himself <...> came, extinguishing that." The
last mention of the gate was in the spiritual charter of one of the
princes, compiled in 1498.
Archaeologists of the Center for
Historical and Urban Planning Research note that on the side of
Kitai-Gorod on Vasilevsky Spusk there was a deep ditch created by Aleviz
Fryazin, “lined on both sides with stone walls 253 sazhens long, 4
sazhens deep, and against the Konstantin-Elensky Gate 6 sazhens ; width
at the sole from 14 to 16 sazhens, at the top by 17 sazhens.
“On
the segment from the Frolovskaya to the Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower,
there were four locks in the moat. - closer to the
Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower. During the backfilling of the moat in the
first half of the 19th century, one of the steps on the site of the
destroyed gateway was still preserved for some time "
The
presence of a moat near the Kremlin dictates the use of the tower.
Konstantino-Eleninskaya was a travel road, some historians believe that
it could even be the main one, because it connected the Kremlin and
Veliky Posad and was the exit to Kitay-gorod. At the end of the 15th
century, two large streets led to it - Vsekhsvyatskaya (Varvarka) and
Velikaya (later it was Mokrinsky Lane, which existed until the end of
the 1950s). The gates of the tower were not only used for military
visits by Ivan III and Ivan the Terrible. In peacetime, townspeople
passed through them to the Kremlin.
Another important use of the
tower is to protect the access gate to the pier on the Moskva River. To
do this, the tower had a retractable archer - an additional turret to
protect the gate, connected to the bridge. The bridge descended from the
outlet archer, and the passage was closed with iron gratings - gers. If,
during an attack, enemy soldiers penetrated the archer, the gers
descended and locked it in a stone bag, where they were fired from the
upper galleries of the archer. After 1508, the second diversion archer
was completed; it was connected to the tower by a bridge thrown over the
moat. In the early 1520s, after the raid of the Crimean Khan
Mohammed-Gerai, the German engineer Nikolai Oberake built bridgeheads
with towers leading to the tower.
Initially, the tower, like all
the other towers of the Kremlin, did not have a conical end. The hipped
top was completed over the main quadrangle in the 1680s. For these
works, the Palace Order gathered master masons from all over Russia.
Despite the fact that the towers and tents were erected at different
times, they look like a single whole. Tiled roofs with watchtowers made
it possible to view the surroundings and warn of fires that often
happened in wooden Moscow.
The tower received its modern name in the 17th century after the
construction of the Church of Saints Constantine and Helena in the
territory of the Tainitsky Garden. In 1651, a stone church was built on
the site of a wooden church, which was named after the cathedral
dedicated to the Roman Emperor Constantine and his mother Elena. In
1692, by order of Natalia Naryshkina, the church was rebuilt. In 1756,
the architect Prince Dmitry Ukhtomsky made a new iconostasis and painted
on the walls.
During a major fire in 1812, the church escaped
destruction and became a refuge for Muscovites who lost their property
and house. In 1836 it was repaired and decorated. In the 18th and 19th
centuries, the cathedral was only repaired and decorated, with the
coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the temple was dismantled in 1928
during the expansion of the park and the construction of a sports ground
for the Red Army. An ancient well and two manholes were found under the
church. The find was forbidden to be explored and covered up. Today, on
the site of the church there are outbuildings and a helipad.
There is a version that the Constantino-Eleninskaya Tower was
connected by a secret passage with the Pokrovsky Cathedral, the lower
part of which was also intended for combat. This theory is confirmed by
the discovery of a secret passage from the cathedral to the territory of
the Kremlin. And for the covert movement of soldiers between the
Konstantin-Eleninskaya and Nabatnaya towers, a passage was arranged in
the thickness of the wall, covered with a barrel vault. Through the
Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower, one of the few, it was possible to climb
the Kremlin wall.
According to some researchers, the bridge at
the Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower was not raised, it was possible to get
on it only after the destruction of the diversion archer. It is believed
that the Italian architect Aleviz, who participated in the urban
planning of Moscow and built a moat-canal 541 meters long, placed an
auditory opening in the tower. This gave rise to many legends about the
dungeons of the tower.
In the Inventory of ruins and dilapidation
of 1646-1647, compiled by order of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to prepare
for the reconstruction of the Kremlin wall, it says: “... a rumor was
made in the same outlet tower, and in that rumor the stair vault was
clogged and bricks were pouring from the vaults in the ear” , but this
passage was walled up during the work. It is possible that the
retractable archer was also equipped with hearing, but there is no exact
data. The dungeons of the diversion archer of the Konstantin-Eleninskaya
Tower are mentioned in the Inventory of the 17th century as a “green
treasury”, which could play the role of a rumor.
During the
repair, narrow stairs were cut in the walls of the lower quadrangle to
climb to the upper platform, the wall passage between the
Konstantin-Eleninskaya and Nabatnaya towers was converted into a prison
dungeon and a torture chamber. In 1894, the archaeologist Prince Nikolai
Shcherbatov discovered the entrance to these rooms:
"In the
Konstantinovskaya tower, along the wall of the Moscow Kremlin leading to
it, there is now a covered corridor with narrow windows, where those
sentenced to torture with riveted mouths were kept, which were riveted
to answer and to take meager food, and chained to the wall, in which
there were iron holes and rings
In 1707, loopholes were expanded
on the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower to install more powerful cannons.
After the diversion archer and the lower tier of the tower were
converted into a prison, the Rogue Order was placed in the tower, which
was guarded around the clock by archery guards from two to 30 people.
During the rebellion of 1682, the archers put Ivan Naryshkin in the
Konstantinovsky torture chamber. At the same time, Stefan von Gaden, the
doctor of the late Fyodor Alekseevich, was imprisoned in the tower,
accused of poisoning the tsar. It is known that some participants in the
uprising of Ivan Bolotnikov were serving posthumous imprisonment in the
Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower.
The existence of the prison has
given rise to many urban legends. For example, one of them claimed that
a bloody stain appeared on the wall of the retractable archer, which
then flowed through the stone walls. After the demolition of the archer
in the 18th century, the legend became associated with the
Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower itself.
In 2016, Sergey Devyatov,
adviser to the director of the FSO of Russia, stated that not a single
document had been found on the construction, arrangement, passages,
underground passages and communications of the tower. Presumably, they
were classified and destroyed. Only Prince Nikolai Shcherbatov managed
to discover some of the secrets of the Kremlin walls and towers in the
18th century, but before and after him, no comprehensive scientific work
on the Kremlin was carried out.
In 1772 the passage was destroyed in the tower. At present, from the
side of Vasilyevsky Spusk on the facade, an arch of the gates is
visible, a recess for the gate icon and traces of vertical slots for the
levers of the drawbridge. On the upper platform of the main quadrangle
there are machicolations laid from the inside at the end of the 17th
century; inside they are divided into two tiers, covered with brick
vaults. The first tier was originally used for travel, and the second
was used for office space.
The overhaul of all the towers was
carried out in 1802-1805, at which time almost all the diversion archers
were dismantled. Later, during the planning of Vasilyevsky Spusk to the
Moscow River, a moat was filled up, as well as the lower part of the
tower with a gate. Hersian bars and drawbridges have been removed. In
the 20s of the XX century, when repairing the Konstantin-Eleninskaya
Tower, the architect Ivan Rylsky used the method of strengthening the
ancient brickwork by means of mortar injections. Subsequent restorations
in the 1950s and 1970s were also made without changing the historical
appearance.
Throughout its history, the tower has repeatedly
received damage. According to historians, the Constantino-Eleninskaya
Tower suffered less than other towers during the occupation of Moscow by
Napoleon, because the gates were blocked. In 1917, during the
revolutionary shelling of the Kremlin, seven towers were damaged,
including Konstantin-Eleninskaya. During the Great Patriotic War, the
tower almost did not suffer from German air raids.
A gilded
flag-weather vane is installed on the tower. The parapet of the
battlefield is decorated with a belt of widths, and the facades are
decorated with semicircular columns and rollers.
In the 15th
century, there was a bas-relief of St. George the Victorious on the
Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower. In the 1990s, restorers tried to
reconstruct the image, but they never succeeded. Currently, they want to
restore this bas-relief on the Spasskaya Tower, although some Moscow
sculptors, such as Dmitry Tugarinov, are in favor of preserving the
historical location.
In 2010, the St. Andrew the First-Called
Foundation found and restored the over-gate icons of the Spasskaya and
Nikolskaya towers. It was planned to explore and restore the icons of
Konstantin-Eleninskaya and other towers.
In 1993, the Bank of Russia issued a banknote of 100
rubles, on the back of which the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower was
depicted along with the Spasskaya, Nabatnaya and Tsarskaya towers.
In the summer of 2017, falcons were returned to the Kremlin, as
these birds have lived on the territory since tsarist times. Residential
boxes were located on the upper tier of the Konstantin-Eleninskaya
Tower.
In August 2017, Kremlin commandant Sergei Khlebnikov
announced that the walls and towers would be restored by 2020. During
this time, drains, waterproofing and wall cladding should also be put in
order. The Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower and adjacent fragments of the
walls along Vasilyevsky Spusk were covered with scaffolding, the work
should be completed by the end of 2018.
In 2022, a postal
artistic stamped envelope was released on which the
Konstantin-Eleninskaya, Nabatnaya, Tsarskaya and Spasskaya towers are
depicted.