Saviour Tower

Now 71 metres high including the star.

Prom very early times the.,ceremonial Saviour Gate was regarded as sacred. Through it solemn processions passed out of the Kremlin onto Red Square and tsars, patriarchs and foreign ambassadors en­tered the Kremlin. According to an old custom all those who passed through the gate, even the tsars, had to bare their heads.

Historical sources of the early seventeenth century give us an idea of what the tower looked like then. On one plan it is portrayed as rather squat with a small wooden turret crowned by a twoheaded eagle. A bell hung under the hipped roof. On the Red Square side, the tower was adjoined by a barbican with two bastions. A drawbridge on chains was lowered across the moat.

-26-

In I624-5 a multi-tiered tent roof was built on top of the tower. It was the work of the English master Christopher Halloway, who was helped by the Russian architect Bazhen Ogurtsov. The tower has five tiers, each of which contains a chamber surrounded by a wide corridor.

There is a smooth transition from the cube to the octagon» above which is a second open octagon adorned with ogee-shaped arches that create an impression of soaring upward movement. The upper parapet was decorated with sharply pointed stone pyramids and sculpted lions and bears. Originally the ornament included naked human figures carved in white stone. In deference to the patriarchal customs of Muscovites of that day, however, some special clothes were made of English cloth for these naked ''idols'". The tower was topped with an octagonal stone tent roof covered with tiles. In 1658 the Tsar or­dered the tower to be renamed the Saviour Tower after the icon of the Mandilion which was over the gateway on the Red Square side.

Most likely the tower was given a clock immediately after it was built. The first documentary reference to a clock, however, relates to the sixteenth century.

In 1625 the old clock was replaced by a new one made by the Russian masters Zhdan, his son Shumilo Zhdanov and his grandson Alexei Shumilov. The thirteen bells for the clock chimes were cast by the master. Kirill Samoilov. The work was supervised by Christo­pher Halloway.

The clock was very different from the present one. It had a re­volving dial painted with stars on a blue background and divided into seventeen hours. A carved ray of sun served as a hand which showed the time. According to foreigners who visited Moscow the clock was "famed throughout the world for its beauty and its mechanism and the loud chime of its big bell which could be heard not only all over the town, but also in the outlying villages more than ten versts away."

In a relatively short time the clock fell into disrepair. In.1706-09 it was replaced by a Dutch clock sent to Moscow on the orders of Peter the Great, which in turn was replaced in the nineteenth century by the clock which adorns the tower today. An inscription on it reads, "This clock was remade in 1851 by the Butenop brothers in Moscow" (parts of the earlier clock were used).

Today the clock, called the Kremlin Chimes,.occupies the eighth

-27-

to tenth floors of the Saviour Tower and weighs about twenty-five tons. It consists of three separate sections, the actual mechanism, the chimes for the quarters arid the chimes for the hours and is brought into operation by three respective weights from 100 to 200 kilograms each. The pendulum which ensures the accuracy o£ the working weighs 32 kilograms.

Instead of the former forty-eight bells the chiming mechanism now has eight, each weighing 320 kilograms, to chime the quarters and one of 2,360 kilograms to chime the hour. All these bells were made in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, some specially for the Saviour Tower.

The bells are in the tower's tenth tier in an open arcade un­der the tent roof. The clock used to be wound up by hand, but now it runs on three electrical motors.

Each of the four dials is 6.12 metres in diameter. The hour hand is 2.97 metres long, the minute hand 3.27 metres long and the pendulum I.5 metres long.

During the fighting in October 1917 the clock was damaged by a shell. In 1918 on the orders of Lenin it was mended by the Kremlin master Nikolai Berens.

Linked by a special cable to a control clock of the Moscow Shternberg Astronomical Institute, the clock shows the precise time for the whole of the country. At midnight and six a.m. its chimes are broadcast by radio followed by the Soviet national anthem.

The Saviour Tower is one of the five Kremlin towers topped by ruby stars (for more about these see below).