The first clock on the Spassky Tower of the Kremlin appeared in the 16th century, at least, this is evidenced by the mention of watchmakers who are in the service at the Spassky Gates. For their work, they were entitled to a good annual salary: 4 rubles and 2 hryvnias in money, as well as four arshins for a caftan. However, the first watch was sold to the Spassky Monastery in Yaroslavl by weight, so the Englishman Christopher Galloway made new ones.
The dial showed day and night hours, depending on the time of year and the length of the day, their ratio changed. At the same time, it was not the arrow, made in the form of a golden ray of the sun, that rotated, but the dial itself.
Galloway, either jokingly or seriously, explained this by saying that "since the Russians do not act like all other people, then what they produce should be arranged accordingly."
These chimes burned down in 1656. During the interrogation after the fire, the watchmaker said that he “wound the clock without fire and from what the tower caught fire, he does not know about it.” Contemporaries said that when Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, returning from the Lithuanian campaign, saw the charred Spasskaya Tower, he wept bitterly. It was decided to restore the clock only after 13 years. All metal parts were “washed in a large trough”, and then boiled for two days in a huge beer cauldron. After a thorough cleaning of all metal parts, what went whole cart fine river sand, they were wiped with a rag and plentifully “smeared with pickled lard”. However, by 1702 they were in complete disrepair.
Peter I ordered to deliver to Moscow a new clock "with a bell game with dances, in the manner that they are in Amsterdam." The mechanism, bought for 42,000 silver thalers, was brought from Holland on 30 wagons. The ringing of 33 bells installed on the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin was heard, according to the memoirs of foreigners, "in the surrounding villages for more than ten miles." Also, additional alarm bells were installed there, announcing fires in the city. The dial on Peter's watch has finally become familiar, with 12-hour divisions.
The melody of the clock, which Muscovites heard at 9 am on December 9, 1706, unfortunately, has not been preserved in history. The chimes served until 1737 and died in another fire. They were in no hurry to repair them - by that time the capital had been moved to St. Petersburg. Almost 30 years later, a large English chiming clock was found in the Faceted Chamber, who knows how it got there. A German master was invited to install them, who tuned them so that they played the melody "Ah, my dear Augustine."
This is the only case in the history of the country when the chimes played a foreign melody.
By 1851, from fires (including the one that engulfed the entire city in 1812) and repairs, the chimes came, according to the characteristics of the Butenop Brothers company, "in a state close to perfect disorder." The same brothers made a new mechanism and carried out the restoration of the watch room. New iron dials were installed on all four sides. Nicholas I ordered that two of the 16 melodies most familiar to Muscovites be left for ringing: “... so that the clock chimes should be played in the morning - the Transfiguration March of the Petrine times, used for a quiet step, and in the evening - the prayer “How glorious is our Lord in Zion”, usually played by musicians, if both pieces can be adapted to the mechanism of hourly music. At the same time, the emperor refused to perform “God Save the Tsar” with bells, writing that “the chimes can play any song except the anthem.”
On November 2, 1917, during the storming of the Kremlin by the Bolsheviks, a shell hit the clock, breaking one of the hands and damaging the mechanism for rotating the hands. The clock stopped for almost a year, until Lenin decided: "It is necessary that this clock speak our language." Thus, the restored clock from August 18, 1918 began to play the "Internationale" at 6 am, and at 9 am and 3 pm - "You fell a victim ...". Subsequently, the "Internationale" was left at noon, and the "victims" - at midnight, but from 1932 only the "Internationale" remained. However, he did not have to rule over the ears of the townspeople for long: since the device of the chimes was subjected to deformation from time and frost, the melody became unrecognizable. So in 1938 the clock went silent for 58 years! During Yeltsin's inauguration, chimes with added bells played Glinka's "Patriotic Song". Later, the choir "Glory" from the opera "Life for the Tsar" was added to this melody.
Now the chimes are chiming the national anthem Russian Federation at noon, midnight, 6 am and 6 pm, and at 3 and 9 am, 3 pm and 9 pm, “Glory” is performed. Interestingly, many believe that the bell strikes (first or last) at midnight on December 31st herald the onset of the new year.
However, in fact, the new hour, day and year begin with the beginning of the chiming of the chimes, that is, 20 seconds before the first strike of the bell.
Clock on the building of the Central Telegraph
The first telegraph station was located in the building of the Nikolaevsky railway station on Kalanchevskaya Square (now the Leningradsky railway station on Komsomolskaya Square). Four years later, in order to make it easier to use the telegraph during the emperor's stay in Moscow, the Assumption was adopted for the construction of a telegraph station in the Kremlin Palace in Moscow. This document prescribes: "It was appointed to arrange a telegraph station with an institution on it to receive dispatches as private." In 1859, in connection with the development of the telegraph network, the Moscow Telegraph Station was opened in Gazetny Lane.
From the side of Nikitsky Lane, you can see a huge clock, and attentive observers will notice that the number “four” on the dial is made in the old manner - IIII, while on the same Spasskaya Tower it is traditionally indicated - IV.
The clockwork itself, which must be wound every week, is manufactured by Siemens-Halske. At that time it was the most practical and high-tech time control system. And the most accurate - it was with these watches that the ministries and Moscow University checked. Even in the Regulations on the reception and transmission of telegraphic dispatches by electromagnetic telegraph, approved by Alexander II in 1855, there was a special paragraph "... on checking the clocks of all stations on all telegraphs of the empire", so that great attention was paid to the exact time.
The clock station, located in the "heart" of the telegraph, has been operating uninterruptedly for about 80 years, transmitting impulses to all the secondary clocks of the building. And the "outdoor chimes" are installed in the attic. It is noteworthy that all this time the clock is marked every half an hour and an hour by the sound of bells. True, residents of neighboring houses complained about the noise back in the 30s of the last century, and since then the clock has been quieter. And in our time, their ringing is not heard at all because of the noise of Tverskaya Street.
By the way, the telegraph bell, like the roof, is green. But this is not a copper patina, but paint applied to objects in war time for the purpose of camouflage - after all, the telegraph has always been an important strategic object and the first target in air raids.
In addition to unusual clocks, one of the early drafts of the coat of arms can now be seen on the building of the Central Telegraph Soviet Union (1923): Earth surrounded by ears of corn, at the top there is a red star, on the sides there is a sickle and a hammer.
Clock tower of the main building of Moscow State University
The clock on the main building of Moscow State University may well be called the "Russian Big Ben". More precisely, four "big-bens", since each tower has two dials, looking at different directions of the world. Engineers call them that: East, North, South and West. The diameter of their dial is nine meters, like that of the London landmark. Previously, they were considered the largest in the world, but now they have moved to the end of the dozen and share a place with the clock of the railway station in the Swiss town of Aarau. The length of the minute hand is more than four meters, and once the watch almost lost it. The masters at the next lubrication loosened the gears a little more than they should, and the huge arrow literally had to be held by hand so that it did not collapse down.
The clock was installed in 1953, when the construction of the main building of Moscow State University was completed. Initially, the pendulum mechanism was set in motion by heavy weights that descended on cables into mines six stories deep. However, many people had to maintain the system, which was simply unprofitable. Therefore, in 1957, all the tower clocks of Moscow State University were transferred to work from an electric motor. In addition, the Soviet engineer Yevgeny Lapkin invented, designed, implemented and patented a unique development. Namely, a clock power station with a reverse control system that connected all 1,500 clocks located in the university buildings. If the course of at least one clock was broken, a signal about this was immediately received on the scoreboard, and the master at the station knew exactly the location of the malfunction.
In 1983, a funny thing happened.
Vigilant Soviet pensioners wrote a letter to the Pravda newspaper complaining that the clocks on different towers of Moscow State University show different times.
Like, it's a mess. There was a hype, a correspondent was urgently sent, who, having arrived at the place, to his own surprise, found out: it turns out that not only the clock was installed at the university, but also the world's largest barometer and thermometer, which "showed the time" out of order.
After the first and only major repair in 2000, the watch got a new "heart" - a modern motor. The clock station now automatically adjusts the time according to the signals of the radio broadcasting network. In addition, it manages bells announcing the beginning and end of classes, which is important for Moscow State University. If there is a temporary power outage, the watch “remembers” the time for up to 30 days and automatically sets all 1500 secondary hours. But once the clock was stopped and waited for the moment when the position of the hands coincided with the “correct” time.
Clock at the Obraztsov Central Puppet Theater
The famous clock, made from the same material as parts for jet aircraft, was installed on the building of the puppet theater in 1970 in parallel with the opening of the center itself. A clock on a dull, windowless concrete box draws attention unusual view: this is an ensemble of 12 houses with wrought iron closed doors. When the arrow points to the house, they swing open, a crowing is heard and, to the music of “In the garden, in the garden”, some kind of fairy tale character- animal or bird The "menagerie" has a donkey, an owl, a cat, a hare, a fox and other characters that change with the time of day. At noon and midnight, all the animals come out of the houses at once, often gathering a large crowd of spectators.
At first, a loud crowing was carried almost throughout the Garden Ring, and the rooster crowed at night, causing the residents of neighboring houses to want to wring his neck.
Therefore, later the clock was transferred to two modes of operation: night and day.
The idea of doll clocks is, strictly speaking, not new: back in the Middle Ages, large, so-called tower clocks were often installed in monasteries and city halls in Germany, England and Italy. Intricate figures sometimes acted out whole performances, and appearing at night, they frightened random passers-by.
As for the Moscow clocks, in the theater a whole room was previously allocated for them, where the mechanism was located, and two people from the special clock service monitored the equipment and turned on tape recorders with recordings of the corresponding “voices”. After the clock became fully electronic, the quality of technology has greatly decreased. They have ceased to be adjusted by the control clock, so they can sometimes lag behind or rush, and now the cock crow is barely audible even during the day, especially considering the ever-roaring Garden Ring.
The clock gave rise to such a concept as the “hour of the wolf”, familiar to every drinker in Soviet times.
The grocery store located opposite the theater was selling vodka exactly from 11 am. At this time, a rooster crowed on the clock, and a wolf appeared from the house. And everyone who, after yesterday's "pipes were on fire", like children, rejoiced at the appearance of this figure with a knife, hinting at cutting snacks.
Clock at Kievsky railway station
Mechanical clock tower business card Kievsky railway station. The author of the building, Ivan Rerberg, could not decide for a long time where the tower could be built, and as a result, he took it outside the main building.
The roof of the tower is guarded by four sculptures of two-meter eagles perched on the corners of a technical balcony. The same eagles stand on the Borodino field, and the centenary of the battle of the same name was celebrated in the year the construction of the station began.
However, birds of prey do not save from the pigeon invasion, and it was because of the pigeons that the clock had to be stopped twice, 40 and 10 years ago.
The clock faces are made of stained white mosaic glass and are located on all four sides of the tower. The clock mechanism was made in Switzerland, in fact it is a simple clock, almost no different from a cuckoo clock. In 1918, the device was lifted onto the tower with a winch and installed in a wooden box-case. Since then, they have counted over 50 million minutes. The clock mechanism itself (weighing 250 kg) is still manually wound, as on the Kremlin chimes, and there are no more than a dozen such clocks throughout Russia.
The Spasskaya Tower is one of the most recognizable buildings in the post-Soviet space, because it is on it that the symbol of Russia is installed - the Kremlin chimes, the battle of which counts the last seconds of each outgoing year for all Russians
Spasskaya Tower was erected in 1491 and was originally called Frolovskaya, in honor of the nearby church of Frol and Lavr, but was later renamed Spasskaya after the icon "Savior Not Made by Hands" was installed over the gate, later lost during October revolution
At first, the tower was about half as low, but later, in 1624-1625, a multi-tiered top was erected over it, ending with a stone tent. AT mid-seventeenth centuries, the first double-headed eagle was erected on Spasskaya, which was the coat of arms Russian Empire, after which the double-headed eagles also appeared on the Nikolskaya, Troitskaya and Borovitskaya towers of the Kremlin
long time ago Spassky Gate were considered holy - that's why it was impossible to ride through them, and men had to take off their hats when passing through the gates. If someone disobeyed these rules, he had to atone for his guilt with fifty prostrations. There are also interesting legend, according to which at the moment when Napoleon was passing through the Spassky Gates in captured Moscow, a gust of wind pulled his famous cocked hat off him)
Previously, on both sides of the Spasskaya Tower there were chapels that belonged to the Pokrovsky Cathedral and were demolished in 1925.
chimes
It is on the Spasskaya Tower that the famous chimes that existed already in the 16th century are located. The first clock was installed in 1625, 13 bells were cast especially for them, but then there were no arrows on their dial and it was divided into 24 parts, indicated by copper, gilded letters - the time was shown by turning the dial itself
The familiar 12-hour dial was installed on the Kremlin chimes in 1705, by decree of Peter I, and from 1706 to 1709, old clocks were replaced with Dutch chimes, which lasted until mid-nineteenth century
chimes that we see today were created in 1851-1852. During the storming of the Kremlin by the Bolsheviks, a shell hit the clock, which required the re-manufacture of a new 32-kilogram pendulum, the restoration of one hand and the clock mechanism. In 1932, a new dial was installed on the chimes, for which 28 kilograms of gold were spent. A complete restoration of the watch was carried out in 1974 - at the same time a special system for auto-lubricating parts of the mechanism was installed. The last major restoration took place in 1999. In the photo - part of the mechanism of the Moscow chimes
In our watches, the arrow moves in a circle of numbers, in Russian, on the contrary, a circle of numbers rotates.
Early morning On the 15th day of the spring month of April, on the 3rd Sunday of the month, going around the free, on this day, municipal museums, in the museum of the "Old English Compound" in Moscow Zaryadye, at an exhibition about ancient Russian arithmetic, I saw a strange-looking blue dial with 17 Slavic letters instead of figures .. This was a drawing of one of the first watch dials of the Spasskaya (then Frolovskaya) tower of the Moscow Kremlin. Because the visit was free, I did not pay for photographing, so I just sketched the dial, and when I got home I googled it.
"In our watch, the hand moves in a circle of numbers, in Russians, on the other hand, the circle of numbers revolves. Mr. Holloway, a very skilled man, made the first such watch, saying that Russians are in no way similar to other peoples, and therefore their watches must have a special device ." I quote from: " The current state of Russia, set out in a letter to a friend living in London. Composition of Samuel Collins, who spent nine years at the Moscow Court and was the doctor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich // Readings in the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities. - M., 1846
Russian watches divided the day into day hours and night hours, following the rising and the course of the sun, so that in the minute of ascent, the Russian clock struck the first hour of the day, and at sunset - the first hour of the night, therefore, almost every two weeks, the number of daytime hours, as well as nighttime, gradually changed "...
The middle of the dial was covered with blue azure, gold and silver stars, images of the sun and moon were scattered across the blue field. There were two dials: one towards the Kremlin, the other towards Kitay-Gorod.
Before that, I thought that the ancient Japanese had the strangest watches, brought to Japan in the 16th century by Dutch traders (I have a model of an ancient Japanese watch from the Gakken constructor at home). The change in the length of seconds depending on the time of year (they change by regular changes in the length of the flywheels, of which there are 2: one swings during the day, the second at night), so that day and night have the same number of hours (6 hours each) .. Despite the fact that the length of night and day seconds coincided only 2 times a year, on the days of the equinoxes. The number of strokes in a watch with a strike is from 9 to 4, because 1, 2 and 3 strokes are reserved for signals for Buddhist prayers. It is clear that at the beginning of the day and night periods (dawn and sunset), the clock struck six strikes, then 5, 4, 9 (noon-midnight), 8 and 7
Turns out, our ancestors were also entertainers : they had constant seconds, there were no minutes at all, but the day was also divided into day and night according to (sunrise / sunset) and the day could be from 7 hours (winter solstice) to 17 hours (summer solstice) due to the increase or shortening the night. Clock resets at sunrise/sunset... Naturally, it was not the arrows that were spinning in the clock (as then in Europe), but the dial.
Already in 1404 on stone tower Kremlin - Frolovskaya (Spasskaya is called from late XVII century) the first clock was installed by the monk Lazar Serbin. Muscovites heard the ringing of the bell every hour. The tower itself then had a different look. A canopy was arranged on its flat top, covering the bell from rain and snow. In 1491, the Italian Pietro Antonio Solarius built a new tower, which has survived to this day. At the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century, the tower was equipped with a new clock. The documents for the time being indicate that the Watchmen received 4 rubles a year, and 2 hryvnias and 4 arshins of cloth for meat and salt. The first chimes were installed on the Kremlin tower in 1585. But in difficult years unrest and foreign invasion they perished.
In the first years of the 17th century, the blacksmith Shumilo Zhdanov Vyrachev was called to the capital from the Komaritskaya volost of the Ustyug district. He was instructed to make and install new "fighting clocks" - chimes - on the Frolovskaya tower. Shumila was helped by his father and son. The hours of the Produced had 24 divisions, they showed daytime - every hour from sunrise to sunset. Then the rotating dial returned to its initial position and the countdown of the night hours began. At the time of the summer solstice, the day lasted for 17 hours, the rest fell at night. The rotating circle of the dial depicted the vault of heaven, the numbers went around the circumference. A ray of gilded sun, fixed above the circle, served as an arrow and indicated the hour. Vyrachev's clock ran properly for about twenty years, but when the tower was rebuilt in 1624, they were sold by weight to the Spassky Monastery in Yaroslavl for 48 rubles: that was the cost of 60 pounds of iron. In 1624-1626, under the guidance of master Christopher Galovey, the upper part of the Frolovskaya Tower was rebuilt. Here Galoway installed a new clock. To them, the bell-maker Kirila Samoilov cast thirteen new bells. During the fire of 1626, this clock was so damaged that Galoway had to do all the work again. Only two years later, the Kremlin chimes rang out again. The watchmen of the Spasskaya Tower were also court masters, one of them repaired large watches in the palace ... and small watches ... in silver. In 1621, the "English" master Christopher Galovey was invited to Moscow for the royal service. He was ordered a new clock, in order to save it from frequent fires, the wooden tower of the Spasskaya Tower in 1625 was replaced by the current stone top. The work on the construction of a multi-tiered roof and a beautiful tiled tent was carried out by Russian master masons under the guidance of architect Bazhen Ogurtsov. Galoway was given a rich reward from the royal treasury for installing the clock. On January 29, 1626, he received from Grand Duke Mikhail Fedorovich: a silver goblet, 29 arshins of expensive fabrics, forty sables and forty martens. In total, the royal gift pulled almost 100 rubles - a huge amount for those times. And the sovereign granted him (i.e., Galoveya) for the fact that he "made a tower clock in the Kremlin-city above the Frolovsky Gate."
It was an instrument of time of a very surprising device. The only arrow of the Kremlin clock, having the appearance of a sunbeam, was motionlessly fixed on the tower. Under an allegorical gilded sun, silver stars, a full moon and a lunar crescent were depicted on a blue disk. Around were 17 Arabic gilded numerals and the same number of decree words - Church Slavonic letters that were used in pre-Petrine Russia. The indicative words were copper, thickly gilded and each arshin in size, and half-hour signs were placed between them. Oak, with a diameter of more than 5 meters, the watch dial slowly turned, substituting the number of the next hour under the arrow-beam. To top it off, the arrow indicated the hours "day" and "night" - according to the division of time that existed then in Russia. daytime hours began with the first sunbeam striking the Spasskaya Tower from the east. And in the evening, as soon as the last spark of dawn was extinguished on gilded weathervanes, the creator of the Galoveev clock Shumilo Zhdanov, who was appointed to the honorary position of “driving” the clock, clutching the azure circle, translated the Kremlin “hour clock” into the night time count. Clocks built by Ustyug craftsmen served not only the city people, clerks in executive offices, but also merchants in the malls. For ten versts around, in the villages and villages, the sound of their bells, cast by the talented Russian foundry worker Kirill Samoilov, was heard. "Wonder of the World" - these watches were enthusiastically called by foreigners who came to Moscow in the 17th century.
Here is what the ambassador of the Austrian Emperor Leopold under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, Baron Augustin Meyerberg, wrote about the clock of the Spasskaya Tower in his notes on Muscovy: “This clock shows the time from sunrise to sunset ... When there are the longest days, this machine shows and beats up to seventeen, and then the night lasts seven hours. Having made this entry, the Austrian ambassador diligently sketched the clock in his album: apparently, for him the clock was a fair attraction. But the clock was unlucky. On a May night in 1626, a terrible fire broke out over Moscow. The entire Kremlin was engulfed in flames. The wooden parts on the Spasskaya Tower burned down, the hour bell, breaking through two brick vaults, fell to the ground and broke. The newly restored clock has served people properly and faithfully for more than a quarter of a century. But on October 5, 1656, a fire broke out again on the Spasskaya Tower. The wooden staircase leading up was burned down, and the clock was also burned. During the interrogation, the clockmaker said that he started the watch without fire, “and from what the tower caught fire, he does not know about it.” Pavel of Aleppo, describing the journey of Patriarch Macarius of Antioch to Russia, speaks of this fire with great regret. He says that Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, who returned from the Lithuanian campaign, when he reached the Spassky Gates and saw the charred clock tower, wept bitterly. After the fire, the watch fell into complete disrepair and required cleaning and repair.
The battle of the Kremlin chimes is a melody that every inhabitant of our country knows from childhood. It seems that the main clock of the country has always existed, and their sound comes from time immemorial. Alas, it is not. The clock located on the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin, as well as their sound, has many predecessors.
Birth of a legend
Despite the fact that for centuries the main clock in Russia was various types of chimes installed on the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin, they were not the first chimes in the country. More than a hundred years before the appearance of the clock on the Spasskaya Tower, their predecessors already measured the time in the residence of Grand Duke Vasily Dmitrievich, son of Dmitry Donskoy. The most amazing thing is that at that distant time it was not just a dial with arrows, but a complex mechanism outwardly made, like a figure of a man who beats a bell every hour with a special hammer. If we talk about the first chimes on the Frolovskaya (now Spasskaya) tower of the Moscow Kremlin, they appeared immediately after its construction in 1491.
However, in the annals, the first description of the chimes appears only a hundred years later, in 1585. The most interesting thing is that the tower clock was placed not on one as today, but on three towers of the Moscow Kremlin at once: Frolovskaya (Spasskaya), Tainitskaya and Troitskaya. Unfortunately, the appearance of the first chimes of the Moscow Kremlin has not survived to this day. Only data on the weight of the watch, which was 960 kilograms, have been preserved. When the clock fell into disrepair, they were sold to Yaroslavl for 48 rubles as scrap.
Second chimes: amazing
The second chimes that appeared on the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin during the reign of Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov. However, from the point of view modern man it was difficult to call them hours. The famous watchmaker Christopher Golovey arrived from England to create the second chimes. The blacksmith Zhdan, his son Shumilo and grandson Alexei became his assistants. Externally, the new watch was amazing. It was a giant dial that personified the sky. The clock had only one hand. But it was not she who rotated, but the dial itself, knocked together from boards and painted in the color of the sky. Yellow tin stars were scattered in a chaotic pattern on its surface. In addition to them, on the dial there was an image of the Sun, whose beam was at the same time the only hand of the clock and the Moon. Instead of numbers on the dial, there were letters of the Old Slavonic alphabet. Bells rang every hour.
Moreover, day and night, the bells of the chimes rang differently, and the clock itself was able to distinguish light day from night. For example, on the summer solstice, the bells of the clock struck seventeen times a daytime melody and seven times a nighttime one. The ratio of daylight to night changed, and the number of night and daytime bell melodies also changed. Of course, for the clock to work accurately, the watchmakers had to know exactly the ratio of day and night on each specific day of the year. For this, they had special plates at their disposal. It is not surprising that foreigners visiting Moscow called the unusual chimes "Diva of the World". Unfortunately, they served only about forty years, dying during a fire in 1626.
Third chimes: unsuccessful
The next clock for the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin was purchased under Peter I in Holland. This time on the tower was an ordinary clock with a classic dial broken at twelve o'clock. The third chimes beat: an hour, a quarter of an hour, and also played a simple melody. It should be noted that Peter I timed the replacement of the chimes in the Moscow Kremlin to coincide with the country's transition to a new daily countdown adopted in Europe. However, the Dutch clockwork turned out to be extremely unreliable and often broke down. For its repair, a team of foreign watchmakers was constantly on duty in the Kremlin, but this did not help much. When the third chimes were destroyed in a fire in 1737, no one was very upset. Moreover, by this time the capital had moved to St. Petersburg, and the emperor had long lost interest, both in Moscow and in the chimes, once installed by his personal order.
Fourth chimes: German melody for Russian clocks
The next time, the clock on the Spasskaya Tower was replaced at the whim of Catherine II. Despite the fact that her imperial court was located in the northern capital, the empress did not leave Moscow with her attention. Once, after visiting the city, she ordered the installation of new chimes, which, as it turned out, had been bought long ago and were gathering dust in the Faceted Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin. The new watch worked pretty well, but there was an unpleasant incident. After the installation of the clock in 1770, they suddenly began to play a cheerful Austrian song "Ah, my dear Augustine." The scandal was terrible. However, the clock was not dismantled, but only the melody was removed.
Even after a shell hit the chimes in 1812, they were restored by watchmaker Yakov Lebedev. Only in 1815, after the clock gears were recognized as emergency, the chimes were significantly modernized. In fact, the entire clock mechanism was replaced, the floors in the mechanical hall were repaired, a new pendulum was installed, and the dial was replaced. From that moment on, it became black with Arabic numerals. As a melody, they set the melody of the hymn "How glorious is our Lord in Zion" at 3 and 9 o'clock and the march of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment of Petrovsky times "at 12 and 6 o'clock. This continued until the revolution of 1917.
Fifth chimes: modern
First time after establishment Soviet power, the leadership of the country was not up to the chimes, which stood up after a shell hit them during the revolutionary unrest. However, after the government moved to Moscow, V.I. Lenin ordered the chimes to be restored. Alas, the watch company that previously serviced the watch broke an astronomical sum in gold, and its services had to be abandoned. Unexpectedly, an ordinary locksmith, Nikolai Berens, who, together with his father, maintained the chiming mechanism before the revolution, offered his help. Thanks to his efforts, the clock was repaired and started running again. Only the melody played by the chimes has changed. Now at 12 o'clock they performed "The Internationale", and at 24 o'clock - "You fell a victim ...". In 1932, by order of I.V. Stalin's clock was once again modernized. In 1974, the clock was stopped for 100 days in order to tidy up and install electronic control. Today, since 1999, the chimes have been playing the Russian anthem.
Everyone who has ever visited the capital of Russia, Moscow and in its very center - on Red Square, admired the famous Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin.
From the history of the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin
In 1491, under Prince Ivan III, the Spasskaya Tower was built to strengthen the northeastern part of the city. The construction was carried out by the architect Pietro Antonio Solari. At first it was called Frolovskaya, after the church in the name of the Holy Martyrs Frol and Laurus, located nearby. The structure was two times lower than it is now. The multi-tiered top and stone dome in the Gothic style were built much later - in 1624-1625. English architect Christopher Galovey and Russian master Bazhen Ogurtsov. By decree of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich on April 16, 1658, the tower was renamed Spasskaya. It received this name because the road to the Spaso-Smolensk Church went through it. There is an opinion that it received its name in honor of the icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, placed above the gate from the side of Red Square.
The Spassky Gate is the most important of the Kremlin Gates. Men took off their hats in front of the image of the Savior from the side of Red Square. It was impossible to ride through them. According to legend, when Napoleon passed through this gate, the wind tore off his cocked hat. All the kings before the coronation passed through this gate. Warriors left here for decisive battles. For many years, the Spassky Gates were opened very rarely, only in exceptional cases, for example, for the passage of the presidential cortege. Since August 2014, through the gate you can go to Red Square. The only way to get to the Kremlin is through the Kutafya Tower.
The Spasskaya Tower is square at the base and has 10 floors. Its height is 71 meters. In the middle of the 17th century, a figure of a double-headed eagle, the coat of arms of Russia, was placed on it. Experts believed that the image of the Savior over its gates was irretrievably lost. Presumably in 1937, in the year of the anniversary of the revolution, the icon of the Savior, like other images on the gates, was immured. But recently it has been found. On the initiative of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation, on June 29, 2010, specialists began its restoration. The icon is well preserved. Its plot is dedicated to the deliverance of Moscow from the invasion of Khan Mehmet Giray. Then, in 1521, Saints Sergius and Varlaam asked the Mother of God for intercession before God. And Mehmet Giray retreated. The icon also suffered from fire and during the war with Napoleon. After restoration, it will be restored.
Clock and chimes on the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin
The first clock on the Spasskaya Tower was installed in 1491. In the future, they were repeatedly changed and restored. So, in 1625, under the guidance of the English master Christopher Galoway, new ones were made that played music. In 1705, at the direction of Peter I, the clock was remade according to the German model with a dial at 12 o'clock. In 1851-1852. on 8-10 tiers, chimes were installed, performing alternately the “March of the Preobrazhensky Regiment” and the hymn “How glorious is our Lord in Zion” by Dmitry Bortnyansky. These melodies sounded until 1917. In 1920, the melody of the Internationale was picked up on the chimes.
In 1999, the hands and numbers were gilded. The chimes began to play the national anthem of Russia. The height of the Roman numerals of the clock is 0.72 meters. The length of the hour hand is 2.97 m, the minute hand is 3.27 m. The watch is wound up with the help of three electric motors. The fight of the clock is carried out with the help of a hammer connected to the mechanism and the bell. The dials have a diameter of 6.12 m and come out on four sides.
Star on the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin
In 1935, the Tsar's Eagle on the Spasskaya Tower was replaced by the first five pointed star- a symbol of the Soviet era. It was copper, covered with gold and Ural gems. After 2 years, she was replaced by a ruby star. The first star now crowns the spire of the Northern River Station. The wingspan of the new star is 3.75 meters. This is slightly less than the first. Inside the star, a 5000-watt lamp burns around the clock.
