The Story of Moscow

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Fortress; the source of our strength

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tersely expresses its value-"Here it is that the great Russian eagle raised its eyrie and spread its immense protecting wings over an enormous empire." To the antiquary, of beauty, to the tourist in search of distraction, the Kremlin is equally attractive. To see it to best advantage, all who visit Moscow for the first time should make the tour outside the walls before entering by any o

ll, repaired from time to time, has escaped all the fires and disasters which wrought such havoc elsewhere in the Kremlin; but in its original state consisted of three distinct parapets, set back and rising above each other over the ditch, much as the tiers of the old towers still remaining. The wall, the inmost of the three, is of an exaggerated Italian style, the battlements unnecessarily deep. The towers and gates are various: some as the Spasski and Troi

AMPART AN

follows exactly the contour and windings of the hill, forming an irregular triangle; the thickness varies from 14 to 20 feet, the height from 30 to 70 feet. Throughout the entire lengt

of the old church of the Nativity of St John the Baptist is conserved in the chapel on the right of the gate in entering. In the second storey is the Royal Chapel of St John, one of the ten churches of the palace; in it a

. Peter the Great had need of all the lead he possessed when building his new capital on the Neva, and the tower was then dismantled.

y the priest of the adjoining church of the Annunciation. According to the legend on the wall

On this spot there has been a gate ever since the Kremlin was first enclosed; it was at one time used for the procession of

, dungeons are beneath the towers, the corner tower once an oubliette, is still supposed to have the remains of the iron blades and spikes, upon which the prisoners fell, projecting from its walls; in the tower of Constantine and Helen were the instruments of torture used to extort confessions, and the church of the same name is that to which the accused were taken to make their oath before being led to the rack or cast into some secret dungeon. The Tsarina's Tower, now a dwelling and storehouse, has no pleasant history; the small tower in which once hung the great bell brought from Novgorod is popularly believed to have been constructed by Ivan Groznoi to afford him a better view of the executions, but, i

ter Antonio Solarius of Milan, was at first known as the Florovski gate from a c

Vetici?, Ougari?, Permi?, Volgari? et aliarum totiusque Roxi? dominus: anno 30 imperii sui has

is carried. Over the entrance is the miraculous ikon of the Redeemer, brought back from Smolensk by the Tsar Alexis in 1647. It is to this picture that the orthodox attribute the raising of the siege of Moscow by the Tartars under Makhmet-Ghiree in 1526; it is still held in great veneration, and it is customary for all to uncover whilst passing through the gate. Formerly an omission to do so was punished with two score and half compulsory prostrations. The Redeemer Gate is the state entrance to the Kremlin; by it the Tsars entered and left on all important occasions. Ivan III. passed through after quelling the revolt at Nijni Novgorod; Ivan "Groznoi" after taking Kazan; Vasili Shooiski after the delivery of Moscow from the Poles

trongly assaulted the Kremlin, here that the Krim-Tartars ineffectually tried to gain an entrance in 1551, and here that the battle raged between the Poles and Russians for the possession of Moscow. Like the Spasski Gate it also has its miraculous ikon. It is a mosaic of S

the explosion of a mine; but, by the wonderful power of God, the holy image of the greatly favoured by God, here desig

Thou art the God, the marvellous Go

ce to the Kremlin, and in the tower above t

sable moat, and thus protect the western side of the Kremlin. Nevertheless the wall is continued at the same height for its whole length. The arsenal, a commonplace building, extends from the corner tower to the Troitski gate, the monotony of its dreary line broken by tw

of Moscow; thence came the men who fired the city during the French occupation. The tower over the gate, in the Gothic style, was added by Galloway early in the seventeenth century and has been twice restored; the rooms in it are now used by the staff in charge of the old archives stored in the various towers of the Kremlin. The bridge is p

OF PLEAS

, whose striking architecture, together with that of the characteristic smaller towers on the walls, relieves the ugliness of the service buildings on the left

river and quays; beyond, the walls of the Kremlin with towers in all styles; the fantastic pinnacles of Vasili Blajenni; the blunted spires of the Vossnesenski convent, behind which rise the gilded domes of the Chudov church and the great cupola of the hall of St Catherine in the Senate. Beyond the striking

rvice corps to the right, the Chudov monastery to the left; continuing straight on, a large open space is reached; then on the left is the smaller palace, on the far side of the square is the Alexander memorial; c

; the palaces in the chapter on "Moscow of the Tsars," and the Chudov and Vossnesenski mona

treat of Ivan Veliki;

surface; its height above is 320 feet, built in five storeys, the first four octagonal, the topmost cylindrical. In the eighteenth century it was considered one of the wonders of the world, and to this day the orthodox invariably cross themselves when passing it.

the cupola, whereon is an inscription o

vich autocrat of all the Russias, and of his son the Tsarevich and Grand Duke Theodore Borisovic

neous: built

which are hung the larger bells, and still further to the north a t

church of St Nicholas of Galstun, demolished during the reign of Alexander I. (1816). A deacon of the old church, Ivan Theodorof, introduced printing into Russia, and in 1567 produced a book of hours on Moscow. Hence, the book dep?t lodged in the tower. Very characteristic of Moscow are these three towers, of different styles of architecture, massed to form one building; that the thre

tates that in Moscow is a bell whose clapper is rung by two dozen men; in 1636, a fire in the Kremlin caused the bell to fall and it was broken. In 1654 it was recast and then weighed some 130 tons; it was 2 feet thick and its circumference over 50 feet. It was suspended at the foot of the tower, and the wooden beam supporting it being burned by the fire of 1706 it once more fell to the ground and broke. It was recast by order of the Empress Anne in 1

n the year 7176 (A.D. 1668), and served until the year of the creation 7208 and of Jesus Christ 1701; in which last year on the 19 June it was broken in a great fire that destroyed the Kremlin: it was mute until the year of the creation ... and of our Lord.... By the command of the majestic Empress-Autocrat Anna Ivanovna, for the glory o

r of Ivan, which, originally founded in 1501 by Afanasief, has been subsequently recast; the next storey has three old bells and amongst those of the highest storey are two "silver" bells. The oldest here dates from 1550; other old bells, Russian, Dutch, and others, are hung in the belfry of Spass na Boru, in that of St Mi

ell in 1812 but was not broken; The Every Day (Vsednievni), 15 tons, cast in 1782; The Seven-hundredth (Semisotni), 10 tons; Bear (Med

; as late as the nineteenth century, the old form of blessing the bell was followed i

ran by a gutter into the mould; and, the casting finished, the Archbishop again gave thanks to God. The leading inhabitants were present at the casting, and freely threw in gold and silver trinkets. On the 23rd February 1819 this bell was removed from the foundry. It was placed on an oak sledge, and after the Te Deum had been sung,

eighs 36 tons, and is of too large calibre and too weak metal ever to have been used as a weapon. When Peter I. after the battle of Narva, ordered old cannon and church bells to be cast into new ordnance, this was spared. So was the mortar by its side, for it was cast by the false Dmitri, who not only took a great interest in the manufacture of fir

debris of three distinct ruins superimposed showed how one town has succeeded another, and as at that point, so at many others. The exercising ground was long covered with dwellings; there were the hostelries of the Krutitski monastery, the houses of the prie

AVIOUR BEHIND T

lt upon the side of an early cemetery; at one time in the open space near Ivan Veliki criminals were publicly executed and the ukases of the Tsar proclaimed. In the same way that the Kremlin is honeycombed with vaults for the storage of great quantities of food and munitions of war, it

roznoi, from this the frenzied people dragged their priest, towards that the threatened metropolitan bravely made his way to officiate at a forbidden mass. Before the Grand entrance (Krasn? Kriltso) foreign ambassadors drew up in pomp to make their calls of state, on that same terrace Ivan with his staff transfixed the foot of the brave messenger of the not less bold Kourbski, there, too, he gazed at the comet supposed to foretell his death. To this place the basket for the petitions

ssion of perfervid piety; the ruin following fearful disaster-whether wrought by the hand of man or the act of God. Such scenes that the walls will seem to echo in turn the laughter of homely merry-making, the hu

tso, indicates is the grand or state entrance to the palace. It was on this terrace that the Tsars of old allowed the people to see "the light of their eyes," and there that those of noble race stood to be "beholden of the people." At one time this flight had the usual porch at the foot, and a red roof above, just as the approaches to the old churches and th

s has four stages and is adorned with most venerable ikons, notably those of "The Reception of the sacred vestments of the Virgin" of the Virgin of Vladimir (an early copy), and of the Holy Trinity, before which are ancient candelabra with the remains of tapers made like the old rushlights and gaily coloured. The inscription is to the effect that they were placed there by the Patriarch Joseph in 1643 and 1645. The old chandelier in the centre is by Sviechkov, a master craftsman of the Tsarian workshops in 1624. The Virgin of Pechersk, brought from Kiev, is hung upon the wall and surrounded with portraits of Peter, Alexis, Jonas, Philip, and other of the patr

edeemer Gate to the Lobn? Mesto. Peter the Great turned the procession to mere burlesque, mounting the Patriarch upon an ox and himself playing the buffoon. Here, too

has now nothing of particular interest, but the exterior is an excellent example of Russian architecture as modified by mid-European influence in the late seventeenth century. Part of the third and fourth storeys instead of retreating, in the Russian style, is made to project, but the "belved

VORETS (PLE

dying masonry to the exclusion of carpentry, and the early Slavs were users of wood-not of stone or brick. It may be that these forms were due to the execution in light elastic wood of arches and vaults copied from foreign work composed

exaggerated for the purpose of decorative effect. If, instead of being placed loosely in the earth to allow of this set, the poles are thrust down deep into the soil or otherwise made immovable and the upper extremities forcibly brought in towards the centre and fastened there, then when the weight of the roof bends the poles, they wi

ngle pole is bent to form the support of a roof and both its extremities are thrust into the ground, the horseshoe arch is obtained as soon as the weight of the roof acts upon such supports. If, instead of the single pole, two shorter ones are taken and instead of being lashed together to form the pointed arch the upper extremities are brought towards each other and

is of course supported from the lintel when executed in masonry. Another characteristic Russian form is the circular arch of masonry, which has the voussoirs of the intrados of the usual regular form but of the extrados slightly elevated at the corner to indicate the "ogival arch," which was the common form of the wooden arch in Moscow. As already stated (ch. ii.) the early forms of Russian dwellings may be studied from the models in the Historical Museum; one peculiarity is that each successive storey is set back from that immediately below instead of projecting as in the half-timbere

second tier, and in like manner other tiers until the desired height is reached for the spire, or the cylindrical shaft that is to support the dome, or whatever other ornament is used to crown the structure. One of the best examples of this form is the church of the Nativity on the Mala Dmitrovka, which was bui

strated by the arch over the doorway to the courtyard of the syno

of the Russian empire and is its true Pantheon. None have graced it more than those early Romanofs whose work is evident in every ancient building, but still mo