Tsar Tower

The architect is unknown. The height is 16.7 metres (about 55 ft) high, includingthe weather vane.

This is the youngest and smallest of the Kremlin towers.It owes its name to the legend that the tsars, Ivanthe Terrible in particular, liked standing up here to watch thebouts of fisticuffs below (there is no documentary proof of these legends).Originally the tower was made of wood in the form of a simple turret. Itcan be seen clearly on early seventeenth-century drawings of the Kremlin.The present stone tower is a typical Russian structure of the seventeenthcentury: the tent roof on four melon-shaped posts which stand on a kindof pedestal, the hanging pendants between the posts, the white-stone pinnaclesand bolsters which pick out the facets of the tent roof topped by a gildedweather vane.

The tower has two tiers. The lower one, used for walkingalong the wall, is arched. The upper one with a platform used to containa bell.