Spasskaya Tower

• 1. Introduction

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  Spasskaya Tower stands at the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, looking out over Red Square, and carved into its stone is a Latin inscription that names both its commissioner and its builder. The inscription declares that Ioann Vasiliyevich, Great Prince of Vladimir and Moscow and ruler of all Russia, ordered the tower built in the 30th year of his reign, and that Pietro Antoni Solari the Milanese completed it in 1491. That inscription is still there today, a five-hundred-year-old dedication written into the wall of one of the world's most recognized structures. What that stone does not tell you is how many times this tower has been renamed, rearmed, rebuilt, and reopened to the world. It does not tell you about the icons that were painted over and then uncovered again, the eagles that became red stars, or the clock face twenty feet across that has ticked out Moscow Time for centuries.

• 2. A Tower Built for Ivan III

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  Pietro Antonio Solari, an Italian architect, raised the Spasskaya Tower in 1491 under the commission of Grand Prince Ivan III the Great. At the time it bore a different name entirely: the Frolovskaya Tower, named for the Church of Frol and Lavr that once stood inside the Kremlin walls. That church is gone now, and so is the original name. The gate beneath the tower served a ceremonial function from early on. Foreign dignitaries were greeted there, and formal processions crossing Red Square passed through it. In 1508, a wooden drawbridge connected the tower to a guardhouse built after the Aleviz Ditch and a moat were completed. That bridge was eventually replaced with an arched structure of stone. As part of Peter the Great's fortification improvements, a redan was constructed in front of the bastion and the inner bank of the moat was faced with stone. The guardhouse itself remained in place until the 20th century.

• 3. Names Written in Stone and Paint

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  The tower's modern name, Spasskaya, traces to two separate sacred images. In 1658, the icon of Spas Nerukotvorny, translated as the Saviour Not Made by Hands, was placed above the gates on the inside wall. It was removed in 1917, the year the Soviet era began to reshape the Kremlin. The second source of the name is an exterior wall painting: the icon of Spas Smolensky, the Smolensk Saviour, created in the 16th century on the outside face of the tower. Soviet authorities plastered over it in 1937, and it remained hidden for more than seven decades before it was uncovered and restored in 2010. When that icon reappeared in August 2010, it revived a ceremonial tradition: parade inspectors now remove their headgear and cross themselves before the gates during Moscow Victory Day parades. The tower was also the first among the many Moscow Kremlin towers to receive a hipped roof, added in 1624-1625 by the architects Bazhen Ogurtsov and Christopher Galloway.

• 4. The Clock on the Tower

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  Historical accounts place the first clock on the Spasskaya Tower somewhere between 1491 and 1585, a wide span that reflects how incomplete the early records are. The current clock is known as the Kremlin chimes, or Kremlyovskiye kuranty in Russian, and it officially designates Moscow Time. Its face measures 20 feet in diameter. The clock's role as a public timekeeping monument has given the tower a kind of daily civic presence that goes beyond its architectural or political symbolism. Bells and chimes broadcast from the tower mark the hours across Red Square and are heard in radio and television broadcasts throughout Russia.

• 5. Soviet Transformations

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  Joseph Stalin ordered the removal of the two-headed eagle from the top of the Spasskaya Tower in 1936, replacing it with a red star as part of his campaign to erase visible remnants of the tsarist period. With the star, the tower reaches a height of 71 meters. Traffic patterns around the tower also changed under Soviet rule. Cars approached the gate head-on from the Lobnoye Mesto and the road beside the GUM department store, while all other vehicles were routed through the Borovitsky Gate. The custom of dismounting from a horse and removing one's cap before the tower, an older ceremonial tradition, ended during the Soviet period. The Kremlin itself remained closed to foreign visitors until 1955, under Nikita Khrushchev. It was converted into a museum in 1961 and added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1990. Elena Gagarina, daughter of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, currently serves as director of the Kremlin Museums.

• 6. The Gate in Modern Life

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  By the 1990s, the passage of vehicles through the Spasskaya Gate had become a practical problem: traffic disrupted pedestrians making their way to GUM and other nearby shopping centers. The decision to close the gate to all traffic came in 1999. Signal lights and guard platforms still stand in place. The gate is now opened only on specific occasions: when the Borovitsky Gate requires repair and all traffic must be rerouted through Vasilyevsky Spusk, for presidential motorcades on inauguration day, for World War II Victory Day parades, and to receive the New Year's tree. Beginning in 2016, a hourly guard mounting ceremony by the Kremlin Regiment takes place within the gate area. The Spasskaya Tower also lends its name to the International Military Music Festival, which is held on the grounds of Red Square. In August 2014, Vladimir Putin proposed restoring the Ascension Convent and Chudov Monastery, both demolished by the Soviet regime in the 1930s. Archaeological work that began in December 2015 uncovered foundations of both structures, but restoration of the Ascension Convent remains unplanned, partly because UNESCO has not approved it.