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Location: Kazan
Spasskaya Tower or Savior's Tower is one of the most beautiful and remarkable entrances of the Kazan Kremlin. Despite fall of Soviet Union it still carries a Soviet star on its needle. It adds uniqueness to the diverse cityscape of the medieval fortification.
The four-tiered Spasskaya Tower with the gate church of the Savior
Not Made by Hands is the main entrance to the Kazan Kremlin and is
located in the southern section of the fortress wall. Erected in the
16th century by Pskov architects Ivan Shiryai and Postnik Yakovlev,
nicknamed "Barma". The tower has been rebuilt several times, in all
centuries it has been given special attention as the main Kremlin tower.
The tower got its name from the icon of the Savior Not Made by
Hands, which was located above its gates. In the Kazan scribe books of
1566-1568. on the founding of the Kremlin Church, the Church of the
Savior was called "The Savior Not Made by Hands, even on the gates." The
icon of the Savior is an exact copy from the banner of Ivan the Terrible
(currently the banner in the Armory), hoisted during the battle for the
city on the site of the future tower.
16th century
According
to the author of Kazan History, on October 4, 1552, after the conquest
of Kazan, Ivan IV inspected the fortress and “ordered the ruined places
to level and set up, and stronger behind, and put more old hail…”. Then
the tsar personally chose the places where on the same day, October 4,
three wooden churches were erected, the so-called “ordinary” ones (built
according to a vow in a day): in the name of the Annunciation of the
Virgin, in honor of Saints Cyprian and Justinia, and in the name of the
Image of the Savior Not Made by Hands .
Construction in stone
proceeded slowly and the stone church in the name of the Savior Not Made
by Hands was completed only in 1555. Dissatisfied with the slow progress
of construction in the Kazan Kremlin, Ivan the Terrible ordered the
Pskov craftsmen Ivan Shiryai and Postnik Yakovlev "with comrades" -
about 200 people of "crackers and wallmen" - to go to Kazan "to break
the stone by spring and in Kazan a new city of stones to make."
In the process of construction, the Pskov architects moved the walls of
the new white-stone Kremlin about a hundred meters from the line of the
walls of the old Bulgarian fortress (towards Ivanovskaya (May 1)
Square). Thus, the Church of the Savior, which was originally built
outside the fortress, ended up inside the walls of the new Kremlin, in
the immediate vicinity of the Kremlin's travel tower, which got its name
from the church - Spasskaya.
In the XVI century. The Spasskaya
Tower was a white-stone rectangular two-tier structure (square base 23
by 23 meters 2.25 meters thick), made of white hewn limestone (under the
lime coating in the lower part, white stone blocks can still be
distinguished). The tower was covered with a hipped wooden roof with a
watch tower and side galleries - archers. The passage through the
Spasskaya Tower was originally T-shaped, with passages inside the tower
towards the northern, western and eastern facades. After the laying of
the western arch, the passage became L-shaped, cranked (this was
preserved near the Tainitskaya tower), which increased the defense
capability of the fortress: it was difficult to deploy a ram in the
passage, break into the fortress immediately, moreover, during the
assault, the enemy turned out to be turned to the defenders of the
fortress on the right side, unprotected shield. The passage was closed
at night with iron-covered oak gates, the keys to which were at the
Kazan governor, and a descending grate, the grooves of which can be seen
today.
Next to the Spasskaya Tower, according to the entries in
the cadastres of 1566-1568, there was “going to the city on the left
side, near the city walls the chapel was chopped into pillars, and on
the chapel there was a large military bell and the clock strikes the
same bell.”
17th century
The tower and the church with it
burned repeatedly. After a fire in 1694, the tower was restored and
received two more octagonal brick tiers with a brick tent, at the same
time the military, or alarm, bell was moved to the tower. The strike of
the alarm bell traditionally announced a fire - this continued until the
very beginning of the 20th century. Judging by the details typical of
Moscow architecture of the 17th century (the width of the parapet of the
promenade around the lower octagon, window frames and rumors), it can be
assumed that Moscow masters completed the construction of the tower.
Before the superstructure of the tower, the Spassky alarm existed in the
form of a small two-tiered turret, to the left of the Spassky tower,
like the Tsarskaya tower of the Moscow Kremlin. It remained in this form
in the 18th century.
18th century
The entrance to the platform
where the alarm bell hung was free (the guards charged only a small
fee), from here a magnificent view of Kazan opened (the height of the
tower is 47 m, the height of the platform is about 30 m).
In the
18th century, a “chiming” clock with a dial rotating around the fixed
hands was installed on the tower. In 1780, the clock was replaced by a
new one, with a classical dial design, about which Zinoviev reports in
the "Topographic Description of Kazan" of 1788 that on the tower "daily
music proclaims the twelfth hour."
19th century
In 1815, after
another fire, the Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands was abandoned
for 20 years. In the twenties of the 19th century, the church was
renewed by the zeal of the commandant of Kazan, Baron Pirkh, and the
military officials of the Kazan garrison, while remaining in the
diocesan department. The temple was finally restored only on the
personal order of Nicholas I, who visited Kazan in 1836. Emperor Nikolai
Pavlovich drew attention to the Spasskaya Tower and ordered "the church
in the name of the Savior located in the Spasskaya Tower of the Kazan
Kremlin to be excluded from the Diocesan to the military department, to
appoint a special military priest to it and clergy <...> and to this
temple to rank all military units and departments. Thus, the Church of
the Savior received a new status of "the military church of the Kazan
garrison." In the process of restoration work, the temple was expanded,
its southern facade was dismantled, and now the church began to closely
adjoin the tower (before that, a small passage remained between them).
The ancient interior of the 16th century was lost in a fire, and, as the
local historian N. Zagoskin wrote in 1895, since the church is now a
military one, its magnificent interior decoration “is composed of
various accessories of military fittings”.
The icon of the Icon
Not Made by Hands, which survived the fire, was transferred to the
southern wall of the Spasskaya Tower, facing Gostiny Dvor (since it took
more than one year to restore the gate church). To access the revered
image in 1820, according to the project of the provincial architect
Schmidt, semicircular staircases were added to the tower from the south
side. Later, a chapel was built here, to which the same stairs led
(later, in 1904-1905, a renovated chapel would be erected).
In
1857, the passage of the tower was made through, and somewhat later, the
main entrance to the Kremlin was cut through in the fortress wall
adjacent to the tower from the east, where an lancet arch was pierced.
Accordingly, the cranked passage was eliminated by laying the gate. A
coat of arms with the image of Zilant was erected over the new arch,
later in the 1880s, an icon of the Kazan Mother of God was installed in
a niche above the arch.
In 1870, on the western side of the
tower, on the side of the Transfiguration Monastery, an extension was
erected with a staircase leading directly to the church. In front of the
Spasskaya Tower there was a deep moat, through which a bridge led to the
main gate, at first a wooden lifting one, and from the end of the 18th
century. - white stone, which connected the fortress with the
settlement. In 1860, the moat was filled in.
In 1895, a monument
to Emperor Alexander II was unveiled on the outer side of the Kremlin
opposite the Spasskaya Tower.
20th century
In 1905, the outer
chapel at the Spasskaya Tower was significantly rebuilt in a
pseudo-Russian style according to the design of the Kazan diocesan
architect F.N. Malinovsky. The renovated tent-shaped chapel of Christ
the Savior was more spacious (consecrated on August 21, 1905).
After the October Revolution of 1917, the chapel was demolished in the
late 1920s, the Icon of the Image Not Made by Hands was transferred to
the only church of the Yaroslavl Wonderworkers in Kazan at that time. In
1930-1931, a direct entrance to the Kremlin was arranged through the
Spassky Gate. In 1963, a gold-plated star with a diameter of 2.7 meters
was installed on the tower. The double-headed eagle that crowned the
tower until 1917 was removed shortly after the revolution. In the upper
tier, a clock with a “crimson” ringing was installed: the brightness of
the illumination during the battle changes depending on the volume of
the bell and paints the white tent in crimson.
The Church of the
Image Not Made by Hands, adjacent to the Spasskaya Tower from the
inside, has generally retained its appearance (with the exception of the
dome). On the north side, the Church of the Savior has preserved the
decoration of the 16th century - typical Pskov blades and lobed arches
on the northern facade. The windows and lancet niches of the Church of
the Savior face the main street of the Kremlin.