The Senate Tower

The Senate Tower one of the buildings included in the architectural complex of the Moscow Kremlin. It is located between the Nikolskaya and Spasskaya towers and is one of the first Kremlin buildings.

Story

The Kremlin Senate Tower erected at the beginning of the fifteenth century (during the era of Ivan III). The work supervised by the architect Pietro Antonio Solari, who came specially from Italy. And in 1680, while carrying out work on the modernization of the Kremlin, it completed. Above the base, mashikuli created – special loopholes intended for shelling the enemy from above. They decorated with a parapet, and a see-through stone tent erected over it. It ended with a small four, decorated with a gilded weather vane. After the reconstruction, the height of the tower was 34 meters. In the future, no improvements made to this sight of Moscow – from the seventeenth century to the present day, its appearance has not undergone changes.

Description

The Senate Tower – blank and square, consists of the following figures: three parallelepipeds, a truncated quadrangular and hexagonal pyramids. During the restoration according to the project of M.F. Kazakov, a statue of George the Victorious installed on the dome, which favorably emphasized the compositional connection with Red Square. Externally, the tower is not much different from the Commandant, Nabatnaya and Armory towers. The graves of the leaders of the Soviet state are located at the foot. The tower has three tiers inside, each with square rooms. There is also a small one-story house here. It believed that it contained the entrance to the escalator, which intended for the decrepit L. Brezhnev.

Functions

From the first day of its existence, the Senate Tower of the Moscow Kremlin had exclusively defensive functions. From the side of Red Square, it blocked the approaches to the Kremlin. Today the tower is a historical site, which attracts thousands of tourists every year. You can get here on certain days, the time of visits also regulated.

Senate tower in the XX century

During the 1917 revolution, the Senate Tower not damaged. When the Bolsheviks came to power, it underwent minimal changes. A year later, a memorial plaque “To the Fallen in the Struggle for Peace and Brotherhood of Nations” by the sculptor Konenkov erected on this Kremlin tower. Later, during the restoration, it removed and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Museum of the Revolution.

In 1930, the famous Mausoleum built near the walls of the tower, and eighteen years later a special passage made to it. A secret passage arranged so that the government had free access to the stands, which used for performances at various celebrations and parades.

Between the Tsarskaya and Senate towers is the Spasskaya Tower – the main one on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin.

Interesting Facts

• Initially, the tower had no name. Only after the construction of the Senate building by the architect Kazakov (1787) did it receive a name that has survived to our times.
• The Senate Tower as a landmark of the Moscow Kremlin recognized as an architectural monument.