The architect of the white wall of the Kremlin. Moscow Kremlin - all the towers of the Kremlin, the history of construction

The first mention of the word Kremlin appears in the Resurrection Chronicle in 1331, then it was still light wooden walls. In 1339, Ivan Kalita replaced them with new wooden walls made of durable oak, and in 1367, Prince Dmitry Donskoy erected impregnable white stone walls in place of the old walls.

(Walls of the Moscow Kremlin under Ivan III at the end of the 15th century. Painting by A. Vasnetsov)

In 1485, Italian architects Mark Fryazin, Anton Fryazin, Aloiso di Carcano set to work on the construction of the walls of the Moscow Kremlin, following the construction of the first tower - Taynitskaya. The work took five years, during which the wall was built on the most threatened south side, and seven towers were erected. Then the walls began to be built from the side of the square, the current Red. Then Ivan III, by order, demolished all the buildings near the old walls of the Kremlin for the convenient construction of new ones. Then, over the next 30 years, along with the walls, all the other towers of the Kremlin were built.

We see these red brick walls even now at the present time. They adorn the slopes of the Borovitsky hill in red color from crumbling bricks with graceful architectural towers.

Characteristics of the Kremlin walls:

The length of the entire wall is 2235 meters;

Thickness from 3.5 to 6.5 meters;

Height from 5 to 19 meters.

The structure of the Kremlin wall:

Inside, the wall consists of cobblestones and white stone, they are filled with lime mortar.

A combat move was made at the top of the wall, it is fenced on the defended side with sharp two-angled teeth, in total there are 1045 teeth.

The towers fit not only into the architectural ensemble of the Kremlin, but also performed a military-defensive task, making the fortress one of the most impregnable in Europe.

In total, there are 18 towers in the Kremlin wall. Three of them: Vodovzvodnaya, Beklemishevskaya and Arsenalnaya went beyond the walls, thus, defending themselves, they held back the attack. Another six, powerful, well-equipped from a military point of view, are travel for defensive purposes.

In the middle of the 17th century, four towers were decorated with imperial double-headed eagles, which were replaced in the 30s of the Soviet era by red stars with a ruby ​​coating. Then the stars were placed not on four, but on five towers, adding a fifth star to Water tower.

The Kremlin wall was built in 1485-1495. from red brick. Its length is 2235 meters. The wall, as if following the outline of the Kremlin hill, gets higher and lower. The thickness of the Kremlin wall is 3.5-6.5 meters with a height of 5 to 19 meters. There are 20 towers of various heights, shapes and styles.

Today we will make walk along the Kremlin wall and climb the inaccessible towers.

It was probably one of the hardest shoots I've ever made. It took more than one month to agree on it - I had to collect a lot of signatures, write a list of desired points and get a dozen permits. At some point, I had already forgotten about the Kremlin, when suddenly they took the picture and allowed it!

The list of desired points was severely cut - they were not allowed to shoot from the roofs of buildings, they were not allowed to climb some towers, but most importantly, the Kremlin wall was left. Walking along the Kremlin walls, climbing inaccessible towers was my old dream, and now it has come true!

This is the staircase leading to the Spasskaya Tower. There are two platforms on the tower, one under the clock, the second above them:

Trees grow on the Spasskaya Tower! Almost on every side behind the clock, it is not visible from Red Square, but they are there:

Bricks on the floor of the Spasskaya Tower:

View of Red Square from the Spasskaya Tower:

View of the Historical Museum and the mausoleum from the Spasskaya Tower:

Kremlin Wall. View from Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower:

Beyond the Wall, everything is not as beautiful as in the tourist areas. for instance behind the Beklemishevskaya tower some rubbish piled up. On the left you can see the mount for the Kremlin Christmas tree:

There are floodlights on the Kremlin wall. It is difficult to walk freely there:

Staircase in one of the towers. most towers empty inside, there is electrical equipment and communications:

Despite the large number of sensors and cameras, city lunatics sometimes try to take the wall by storm.

Near the Kremlin wall between the Komendatskaya and Troitskaya towers there is an interesting civil structure of the middle of the 17th century. - the so-called Amusing Palace:

In the 19th century the commandant of Moscow lived in the Poteshny Palace, in the 20th century there was the first Kremlin apartment of I.V. Stalin (until 1932). The Poteshny Palace is the only architectural monument of the boyar dwellings preserved in the Kremlin.

Commandant's Tower:

View from the observation deck of the Borovitskaya tower to the Armory and BKD:

Kremlin wall, view from the tower:

Behind the wall are these crow traps. Sometimes up to 200 birds are packed into a cage. Their further fate is not known. What do you think they do with the crows? An FSO employee denied the information that I make meatballs out of crows in the Kremlin canteen 😉

Bench in the Tainitsky garden. The president sat on it.

Some towers have a special telephone number:

The walls inside some towers do not differ from the entrances of houses in disadvantaged areas. This refutes the theory of some scientists that they shit and shit where it's dirty. The Kremlin is very clean, but the cattle crap even on the centuries-old Kremlin walls:

Surprisingly, there is a gate on the wall. Here they are needed so that the musicians of the Presidential Orchestra, located in the Trinity Tower, cannot escape 😉

There are many pipes along the Kremlin wall:

And this is a greenhouse that grows plants in it that decorate the interiors of the Kremlin premises:

Eternal flame Glory at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier:

Grotto "Ruins" in the Alexander Garden:

The doors in the tower are old:

And this Royal tower. A small turret was placed right on the wall in the 80s of the 17th century between the Spasskaya and Nabatnaya towers of the Kremlin. Its octagonal tent on pitcher-shaped pillars resembles the lockers of the porches of stone residential choirs common at that time:

The name of the tower is associated with a legend according to which it served as a kind of canopy over the royal throne, from where the sovereign of all Russia could observe the events taking place on Red Square from the walls of the Kremlin.

And this is the sunset from the Spasskaya Tower:

In contact with

The Kremlin wall is a brick wall surrounding the Moscow Kremlin.

The total length of the walls is 2235 m, the height is from 5 to 19 m, the thickness is from 3.5 to 6.5 m. In plan, the walls form an irregular triangle.

The top of the wall, according to the Lombard tradition, is decorated with battlements in the form of a dovetail, there are 1045 teeth in total along the top of the wall. Most of the battlements have slit-like loopholes. There are wide embrasures covered with arches in the walls.

From the outside, the walls are smooth, from the inside they are decorated with arched niches - a traditional technique designed to facilitate and strengthen the structure of the structure.

Building

Under Ivan III and his successor Vasily III, the construction of the Kremlin walls was headed by architects Anton Fryazin, Marko Fryazin, Pietro Antonio Solari and Aleviz Fryazin Stary.

Brick walls were placed along the line of white stone ones, with a slight retreat to the outside. Starting from the Spasskaya Tower, the territory of the Kremlin was enlarged in an easterly direction.

Lilya Dal (Biryukova), CC BY-SA 3.0

Approximately 20 years after the construction of the Kremlin wall, the Kitai-Gorod wall was added to it, embracing the entire Kitai-Gorod.

bricks

For the construction of walls and towers, large (30 × 14x17 cm or 31 × 15x9 cm) bricks weighing up to 8 kg each were used.

The front walls were laid out of brick, which were filled with white stone. The highest walls were erected along Red Square, where there was no natural water barrier.

Passages and caches

Initially, inside the wall through all the towers there was a through passage covered with cylindrical vaults.

Benoist et Aubrun, Public Domain

Most of the passage was eventually covered with construction waste, the section between the Konstantin-Eleninskaya and Nabatnaya towers has been preserved.

There were also caches and passages under the walls, in some cases going far beyond the line of fortifications.

Wall in the XVIII-XX centuries.

In 1702–36 for the construction of the arsenal building, part of the wall was dismantled, later restored.

In 1771–73 for the construction of the Kremlin Palace according to the project of V.I. Bazhenov, a part of the southern wall between and the Blagoveshchenskaya towers was also dismantled, which was later restored. Undermining the Kremlin by the French (1812) caused heavy damage to the walls, especially the walls along the Neglinnaya. Repair and restoration of fortifications were carried out from 1817 to 1822.

In 1866–70 The walls and towers of the Kremlin were restored by the architects N. A. Shokhin, P. A. Gerasimov, F. F. Richter, who sought to give the buildings their original appearance. However, many authentic details were then lost and replaced by inaccurate copies.

Heidas, CC BY-SA 3.0

Examination and partial restoration of the walls was carried out in 1931–36. The next restoration of the walls and towers of the Kremlin took place in 1946–53. In its course, the walls were cleaned and repaired, the loopholes and parapets were restored. The restoration commission included prominent scientists and restorers: I. E. Grabar, V. N. Lazarev, M. V. Alpatov, P. D. Korin, D. P. Sukhov and others.

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Moscow Kremlin

Kremlin wall towers

There are 20 along the walls. 3 towers, standing in the corners of the triangle, have a round section, the rest are square.

The highest tower is Troitskaya, it has a height of 79.3 m. Most of the towers are from the second half of the 17th century. maintained in the same architectural style.

Necropolis

The northeastern section of the wall, overlooking the northern part of Red Square, serves as a columbarium for urns with the ashes of leaders of the communist movement and the Soviet state. Many of them are also buried in the ground along this section of the wall.

In the post-Soviet period, the question of the need to transfer the necropolis to another place for political, religious and other reasons was repeatedly raised.

• The Kremlin wall between the Annunciation and Taynitskaya towers has a vertical ledge and a reduced pitch of two teeth, as if during construction from different sides they made a mistake in joining. This "mistake" divides the wall between the towers in an approximate ratio of 1 to 2, counting from Blagoveshchenskaya.

The address: Russia Moscow
Start of construction: 1482
Completion of construction: 1495
Number of towers: 20
Wall length: 2500 m
Main attractions: Spasskaya Tower, Assumption Cathedral, Ivan the Great Bell Tower, Annunciation Cathedral, Archangel Cathedral, Chamber of Facets, Terem Palace, Arsenal, Armory, Tsar Cannon, Tsar Bell
Coordinates: 55°45"03.0"N 37°36"59.3"E
Object of cultural heritage of the Russian Federation

Content:

A Brief History of the Moscow Kremlin

In the very heart of Moscow, on Borovitsky Hill, the majestic ensemble of the Kremlin rises. It has long become not only a symbol of the capital, but of the whole of Russia. History itself decreed that the ordinary village of Krivichi, spread out in the middle of the wilderness, eventually turned into the capital of a mighty Russian state.

Kremlin from a bird's eye view

The Kremlin or citadel in ancient Russia was called the central, fortified part of the city with a fortress wall, loopholes and towers. The first Moscow Kremlin, built in 1156 by Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, was a wooden fortress surrounded by a moat and a rampart.

During the reign of Ivan I, nicknamed Kalita (money bag), oak walls and towers were erected in Moscow and the first stone building was laid - the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Mother of God.

View of the Kremlin walls from the Kremlin embankment

In 1367, Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy surrounded the Kremlin with a powerful fortress wall made of white limestone. Since then, the capital has been nicknamed "White-Stone Moscow". Large-scale construction unfolded under Ivan III, who united a significant part of the Russian lands around Moscow and built a residence worthy of the "sovereign of all Russia" in the Kremlin.

For the construction of fortifications, Ivan III invited architects from Milan. It was in 1485 - 1495 that the walls and towers of the Kremlin that still exist today were built. The top of the walls is crowned with 1045 battlements in the form of a "dovetail" - they have the same appearance as the battlements of Italian castles. At the turn of the 15th - 16th centuries, the Moscow Kremlin turned into an impregnable massive fortress lined with red brick.

View of the Kremlin from the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge

In 1516, a moat was dug along the fortifications overlooking Red Square. After the Time of Troubles, the towers were decorated with tents, giving the Kremlin a modern look.

The miraculous return of the shrine of the Moscow Kremlin

Spasskaya, created by the Italian architect Pietro Antonio Solari, is rightfully considered the main of the 20 towers of the Moscow Kremlin. The Spassky Gate has long been the main entrance to the Kremlin, and the chimes placed in the tent of the tower are known as the main clock of the country. The top of the tower is crowned with a luminous ruby ​​star, but after the collapse of the USSR, there are more and more calls to remove the star and hoist a double-headed eagle in its place. The tower got its name from the over-gate icon of the Savior of Smolensk.

View of the Kremlin from the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge

The icon was revered as a saint, so the men, passing through the gate, in front of the image of the Savior had to take off their headdress. The legend says that when Napoleon was passing through the Spassky Gates, a gust of wind tore off his cocked hat from his head. But the bad omens did not end there: the French tried to steal the gilded riza that adorned the image of the Savior of Smolensk, but the ladder attached to the gate overturned, and the shrine remained unharmed.

During the years of Soviet power, the icon was removed from the tower. For more than 70 years, the shrine was considered lost, until in 2010, restorers discovered a metal mesh hiding the image of Christ under a layer of plaster. On August 28, 2010, on the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, Patriarch Kirill solemnly consecrated the newly found icon over the gates of the Spasskaya Tower.

Beklemishevskaya tower

Legends and myths of the Kremlin

From time immemorial, the Moscow Kremlin was not only a symbol of the sovereign's unlimited power, but also a place about which legends were composed. For a long history about the Kremlin temples and towers, so many legends have been created that would be enough for a whole book.

The most famous legends tell about secret dungeons and underground passages. It is believed that they were invented by Italian architects who designed and built the Kremlin walls and towers. Many underground rooms have been preserved under the former Chudov Monastery, which until the 1930s was located in the eastern part of the Kremlin Hill. These are passages, the interior of temples and long galleries. To date, some of them are flooded with groundwater.

Eternal flame near the walls of the Kremlin

There are rumors among Muscovites that branched underground passages used to lead out from each of the Kremlin towers. The same secret passages connected all the royal palaces. When in the 1960s the builders undertook to dig a large foundation pit for the State Kremlin Palace, they discovered three underground passages built in the 16th century. The dungeons were so wide that a cart could be driven through them.

Underground passages were found during every major reconstruction. Most often, voids, dips and labyrinths were walled up or simply filled with concrete for safety reasons.

Spassky Tower

One of the secrets of the Moscow Kremlin is also associated with its dungeons. For several centuries, historians and archaeologists have been struggling with the mystery of the disappearance of the library of Ivan IV the Terrible, which is also called Liberia. The Russian sovereign inherited a unique collection of ancient books and manuscripts from his grandmother Sophia Paleolog, who received these books as a dowry.

In historical documents, there is an inventory of the library, consisting of 800 volumes, but the collection itself disappeared without a trace. Some researchers are convinced that it burned down in a fire or disappeared during the Time of Troubles. But many are sure that the library is intact and hidden in one of the Kremlin dungeons.

View of the Assumption, Annunciation Cathedrals and Cathedral Square

Finding books in vaults located underground was not an accident. When Sophia Paleolog arrived in the city in 1472, she saw the terrible consequences of the fire that raged in Moscow two years earlier. Realizing that the library she had brought could easily perish in a fire, Sophia ordered to equip a spacious basement for storage, which was located under the Kremlin Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. After that, valuable Liberia was always kept in the dungeons.

View of Cathedral Square and Ivan the Great Bell Tower

Cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin - "altars of Russia"

Today the Moscow Kremlin is both the place of work of the President of the Russian Federation and a historical and cultural museum. The historical center of the Kremlin is represented by Cathedral Square with three cathedrals - Assumption, Arkhangelsk and Annunciation. An old proverb says: "The Kremlin rises above Moscow, and above the Kremlin - only the sky." That is why all the people honored the decrees of the king, which he proclaimed in the Assumption Cathedral.

This temple can rightfully be called the "altar of Russia." In the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, the tsars were crowned kings, the next head of the Russian church was elected, and the relics of Moscow saints found eternal rest in the tombs of the temple. The Archangel Cathedral, starting from 1340 and up to the 18th century, served as the burial place of Moscow princes and tsars.

Archangel Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin

Under its vaults, tombstones are installed in a strict order on white stone slabs. The Annunciation Cathedral was the personal prayer house of the Moscow princes: here they were baptized, confessed, married. According to legend, the grand ducal treasury was kept in the basement of this temple. Cathedral Square is surrounded by the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, Faceted and Patriarch's Chambers. Meetings of the Boyar Duma and Zemsky Sobors were held in the Palace of Facets, and the office of the Holy Synod was located in the Patriarchal Palace.

Sights of the Moscow Kremlin

The younger buildings of the Kremlin include the Grand Kremlin Palace, built in the middle of the 19th century by order of Emperor Nicholas I. Today, the main residence of the President of Russia is located within its walls.

Tsar Cannon

In the palace halls, ceremonies of inauguration of the President are held, state awards and credentials are presented. One of the buildings of the palace houses the Diamond Fund of the Russian Federation and the Armory - a treasury of palace household items. In the Kremlin, on the pedestals are the Tsar Cannon weighing 40 tons and the Tsar Bell weighing 200 tons - masterpieces of Russian foundry craftsmanship. Due to their gigantic dimensions, they are not suitable for their intended use, but they have become symbols of great Russia. The Kremlin is always crowded. Guests admire the enduring beauty of architectural creations that personify Russian history. As M.Yu. Lermontov in "Panorama of Moscow", nothing can compare with this Kremlin, which, "surrounded by battlements and golden domes of cathedrals, reclining on a high mountain, like a royal crown on the forehead of a formidable lord."