The Taynitskaya Tower is the central tower of the southern wall of the Moscow Kremlin. The first Strelnitsa was built on this site in 1485, designed by the Italian architect Anton Fryazin. In the 1680s it was built over, and in 1771 it was dismantled. In its current form, the tower was restored in 1783 with an approximate preservation of the old forms. Before the demolition of the branch strelnitsa in 1933, the tower was a passageway
At the end of the XV century, Ivan III conceived the idea of
rebuilding the dilapidated white-stone Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy.
Italian architects Pietro Antonio Solari and Anton Fryazin (Antonio
Gilardi) were invited to build the new fortress. Construction began on
the southern side, which was in greater danger of being attacked by the
Tatars. Anton Fryazin was the first in 1485 to lay a strelnitsa on the
site of the Cheshkov Gate of the white stone fortress of 1366-1368,
having provided a well-cache and a hidden exit to the Moscow River
inside in case of a siege, in connection with which the tower was
nicknamed Tainitskaya. The construction of the well at this place was
due to the fact that the descent from Borovitsky hill was the most
gentle here.
For a long time, the Taynitskaya Tower was
considered the first brick defensive structure in the history of Moscow,
until it became known that a certain "brick strelnitsa" (probably on the
site of the Alarm or Trinity Towers) existed in the Kremlin by the 50s
of the XV century.
The tower played an important role in the
defense of the Kremlin from the river side. It had a travel gate and a
branch archway, which was connected to by high arched passages (access
to them was in the upper tier of the tower).
Little is known about the history of the tower in the XVI century.
During the raid of the Crimean Khan Devlet Giray on Moscow in 1571, the
city was set on fire. It is very likely that the Taynitskaya Tower,
among other Kremlin buildings, was damaged in a fire and was soon
restored.
The first known mention of the existence of a clock on
the tower dates back to 1585.
The first documentary image of the
tower dates back to the beginning of the XVII century. At that time, it
was covered with a wooden plank roof, above which there was a clock
closet with a bell. A wooden tent crowned the branch arch with
machicolations and crenellations.
Sentries were on duty at the
Taynitskaya Tower, watching Zamoskvorechye and letting the fire be known
by the bell signals, a small wooden tower with which was located to the
east of the tower on the Kremlin wall.
By the beginning of Alexei
Mikhailovich's reign, the Kremlin walls were dilapidated and in need of
repair. In 1646-1647, the young tsar ordered a special inventory of
ruins and dilapidations to bring the walls and towers of the Kremlin
into a proper royal residence:
At the Tainitsky gate, the bull
crumbled along a fathom without a pair, and up a fathom with a pair, and
the shoot on the city to the Tainitsky gate broke out; yes, outside the
shoot crumbled and settled into a brick and in two, along a fathom and a
half, up half a step
In the second third of the XVII century. the
tower suffered from a watchmaker who settled right on it. This is known
from the inventory of the Kremlin in 1667.:
The Tainitskaya Tower.
The vaults are intact on it. And on the tower there is a wooden, chopped
closet, and in the closet there is a clock. Yes, there are two wooden
huts on the same tower. And the watchmaker said that he had put those
huts on his own money, and put them without beating his forehead,
without a decree. And between those huts and the closet where the clock
stands, there is a canopy, and in the canopy there is a waste, and from
the waste there is urine on the wall, and from that vault there will be
a ruin. And those chapels of his are not covered, the roofs have
collapsed, there is a leak everywhere. And how those huts were set up,
and that's about ten years old. And the Taynitskaya Tower is not covered
The last mention of the clock dates back to 1674.
In the old days, the Taynitsky gate was rarely used and was guarded
by a Streltsy guard. They had many names: Cheshkovy, Chushkovy,
Sheshkovy, Potainitsky, Vodyanye Vorota. Until the revolution, a water
consecration was performed on the Moskva River opposite them on the
holidays of the Resurrection, the Origin of the ancient Cross and the
Baptism of the Lord. Jordan was also organized on the feast of the
Epiphany. The royal entrance to the Jordan in pre-Petrine Moscow was one
of the most magnificent ceremonies. Pavel Aleppsky, who visited Russia
during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, left a description of this
celebration:
In the whole country of Moscow, only two holidays a
year are celebrated especially solemnly, namely Epiphany and Palm
Sunday, as we saw later. In the royal city they make a huge platform
over this river, because it flows near the wall of the royal palace. The
tsar and the patriarch, together with the bishops, the abbots of the
monasteries and all the priests, who walk in pairs in vestments, leave
the great church in a large procession to the Water Gate. The king
follows them along with all the nobles of his state, walking on foot in
a crown. When the service begins, he bares his head, remaining so until
the end in the intense cold here. We were informed that under former
kings, they usually kept a high dome over their heads, which was carried
by 30 people, to protect them from cold and snow; but this prosperous
king, due to his extreme piety, does not allow this, but remains with
his head open, saying that cold and snow are mercy from God, can Who
will turn them away from the king? When the patriarch plunges the cross
for the third time, there is great rejoicing. Many holes have already
been cut on this river, in which priests immediately baptize babies and
men, because this day is expected from year to year. When the patriarch
sprinkles the nobles and the tsar, the latter returns in a sleigh
upholstered in red velvet inside and out, with silver and gold nails, a
horse blanket made of forty sables; it goes as a gift to the groom. Then
the patriarch sprinkles the priests and the nobles present and returns
with a procession to the church for mass.
He also mentions the
existence of an image of Christ above the gate, talking at the well with
a Samaritan woman.
In the 1680s, Russian craftsmen erected a stone top over the
quadrangle of the tower - an open arched quadrangle, completed with a
four—sided tent with an observation tower.
According to the
Inventory Book of 1701, the tower was almost square in plan (the length
of the tower was 4½ fathoms (9.72 m), the width was 4⅔ fathoms (10.08
m), and the height was 19 fathoms (41.04 m). The discharge archer in the
plan was a square with a side of 5.5 fathoms (12.42 m), its height was
10 fathoms (21.6 m).
Judging by the engraving by P. Picart, made
around 1708, there were no transitions between the tower and the branch
arch by that time, and the arch itself well preserved its medieval
forms: the tall quadrangle was crowned with machicolations and
two-horned teeth. The architectural treatment of the superstructure of
the Taynitskaya tower may have echoed the decor of the
Konstantino-Eleninskaya: the engraving depicts three arched windows at
the base of the tent, above which there was a belt of widths.
On March 15 (26), 1771, in connection with preparations for the construction of a new Kremlin Palace designed by V. I. Bazhenov, Catherine II ordered "to break down the city wall along the Moscow River from the Church of the Annunciation to the Church of Peter the Metropolitan, and not to touch these churches." At the same time, the peasant Varykhanov concluded an agreement "on the breaking of the city wall with the Tainitsky gate and the alarm tower standing on the wall and fifty fathoms from the middle of the gate on both sides." In June 1772, Bazhenov had already examined the dismantled section "counting from the middle of the Tainitsky gate on both sides 50 fathoms with an alarm tower and at the gate of the guardhouse."
In May 1775, a contract was signed with contractors for the
restoration of dismantled towers and walls, which should begin in the
same summer "along the line where the city wall used to be, and the
towers should also be laid with a white stone." The restoration was
carried out under the supervision of architect Carl Blank. It was
attended by 350 masons and 50 "best craftsmen" sent from Vladimir,
Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl. By decree of Catherine II, new walls and
towers were ordered to "do the same exactly and in the same form and
figure as they were before, without making a mark on a single feature,"
according to previously removed plans and profiles. At the beginning of
1782, the entire dismantled wall, the Taynitsky Gate and the First
Unnamed Tower were "brought to completion in their former form, except
for the obelisk. On June 20, 1783, a "new pomeranian and a weather vane
made of state-owned iron" were ordered from the master Ivan Eliseev for
5 rubles.
Traditionally, it is believed that the construction was
carried out with the exact preservation of the previous forms, but a
number of data may indicate the opposite. When comparing the images of
the tower on an engraving by P. Picart and a watercolor by F. Camporesi
discovers that the new outlet archer has acquired a different shape. The
width of the restored tower is 9 fathoms 8 vershkov (19.52 m), and the
former tower according to the Inventory Book of 1701 is 4½ fathoms (9.72
m).
The passage of the tower was originally t-shaped: on the Kalashnikov
panorama, a gate is visible in the western wall of the branch
strelnitsa.
According to some sources, in 1812, during the
retreat of Napoleon's troops from the Kremlin, the tower was damaged by
an explosion and was repaired in 1816-1818, according to others, it was
not damaged at all. Nevertheless, when the tower was accepted by the
Kremlin expedition in 1823, there were no doors or gate panels in it,
and the well was uncovered. On February 15, 1826, a watchman of the III
Department of the Court Yard drowned in it. The well was repaired only
in September 1829. In 1833-1834, new locks were installed on the passage
gates of the Taynitskaya Tower and keys with the monogram of Nicholas I
were made. The keys were given to the Moscow commandant, and half a
century later they were transferred to the Armory.
In 1862,
according to the project of A. S. Campioni, the repair of the branch
arch was carried out. A platform for cannons was built, and part of the
walls and parapet were restored. In 1863, the tower itself was repaired:
a new plinth and white stone belts were laid out, brick cladding was
replaced, arches, cornices, windows and a tent were fixed, which was
covered with new tiles. In the same year, a sinkhole occurred in the
passage of the gate, as a result of which a vaulted room was discovered.
The room was preserved by repairing the collapsed vault and removing
three pipes for ventilation.
For the coronation of Alexander III,
a fountain was installed on the site of the Taynitskaya Tower, the jets
of which were illuminated with colored lights and fell into the Moskva
River. During the celebrations of 1896, the Taynitskaya Tower also
played a key role in illuminating the Kremlin. The fountain spouting
into the river was replaced by a "water cascade". Water was supplied to
the tower by a special pump and descended down the steps leading from
the roof. The cascade was illuminated with sparklers and special
spotlights. Illuminating compositions were arranged at the foot of the
tower.
In the XIX—XX centuries, the gates of the tower were not
used for passage — they were open only to pedestrians. Until 1917, the
Kremlin signal cannon was fired daily from the platform of the otvetnaya
strelnitsa, notifying Muscovites of the onset of noon — similar to the
tradition of firing the Peter and Paul cannon in St. Petersburg.
During the uprising in October 1917, the Kremlin was occupied by the
Bolsheviks. The Taynitskaya Tower, along with many fortress buildings,
was inhabited.
In 1932-1933, during the expansion of the Kremlin
Embankment, the branch strelnitsa was dismantled, the travel gates were
laid and the inner well of the Taynitskaya Tower was filled in. Shortly
after the end of World War II, in January 1946, the government adopted a
resolution "On the repair of the towers and walls of the Moscow
Kremlin", and in June of the following year, projects for the
reconstruction of the Kremlin ensemble were considered. In 1949, the
restoration of the tower was carried out: the roof and tent coverings
were updated, the dilapidated brick cladding was repaired. In 1973, the
Taynitskaya tower and the spinning wheel were cleaned of dust by steam
blasting.
The lower part of the tower is a quadrangle with a perimeter of 34
fathoms (72.42 m), elongated along the west-east axis, which ends with a
parapet with machicolations and flaps. The arch of the gate is laid on
the southern facade and remains uncovered from the Kremlin side. Spiral
staircases are located in the thickness of the end walls of the tower.
The upper part of the tower consists of a tetrahedron, a truncated
tent and a watchtower with a tent topped with a gilded weather vane. The
quadrangle is decorated with columns intercepted by belts supporting the
cornice. It has two arched openings on the front side and one on the end
side. Currently, the side openings are completely laid, and the openings
from the embankment side are up to the base of the arches. On each side
of the truncated tent there are four dormer windows, the lower pair of
which is decorated with architraves with semicolons and triangular
pediments. The watchtower is decorated with flaps and half columns, has
two openings on each side. The tent is four-sided, with a dormer window
with a triangular pediment on each side. The truncated tent and tent are
covered with tiles and decorated with vertical bundles on the sides and
in the middle of each face.
The non-preserved branch arch had a
parapet with battlements and a travel gate, the arch of which was
located at the eastern end of the tower. In addition to the archway,
there was a fenced-off hiding place with an ancient well inside.