Description of the attraction
On Ivanovskaya square A remarkable example of the skill of Russian foundry workers, made by order of Empress Anna Ioannovna, has been installed in the Moscow Kremlin. According to the empress's plan, the Tsar Bell was supposed to remind descendants of the times of her stay on the throne.
Predecessors of the Tsar Bell
The first huge bell, cast in Russia at the end of the 16th century, was Godunovsky … It was also installed on Ivanovskaya Square in the Moscow Kremlin in 1599. The weight of the Godunov bell was more than 33 tons … The bell in the Kremlin often became the subject of attention not only of Moscow onlookers, but also of foreign travelers who found themselves on business or at leisure in the capital of the Russian kingdom. The Godunov bell served for about half a century, until it died in the fire of one of the most powerful Moscow fires, which in the 17th century happened often in the city and were distinguished by a special scale.
At this time he reigned Alexey Mikhailovich, who decided to restore the bell. The sovereign tried to commission the casting Hans Falk - a bell and cannon master, who was born in German Nuremberg, and in the middle of the 17th century worked in Moscow. The German Falk set a number of conditions that did not suit Alexei Mikhailovich. The sovereign did not want, in particular, to wait five years, and therefore the Russian foundry masters got down to business - Danila Matveev with his son Emelyan and assistants. They were ready to use copper from the Godunov bell, which Falk strongly opposed. The new bell was completed in 1654.
However, after a year Big Assumption Bell again had to be redone, as the body cracked from too strong a blow of the tongue. Russian master Alexander Grigoriev worked for ten months, and finally a new bell appeared in the Kremlin. He served people for about 50 years and in 1701 he died in a fire, like Godunovsky.
Memory of Anna Ioannovna
Anna Ioannovna She ascended the throne in 1730 and almost immediately decided to leave the memory of the years of her reign to her descendants. The Empress ordered to re-cast the Great Assumption Bell "again with replenishment, so that it had ten thousand poods in the decoration." The weight of the new giant was supposed to be two hundred tons.
The empress found craftsmen for the implementation of the project in their homeland. Ivan Motorin by this time he was already quite an old man and could boast of great experience in casting cannons and bells. He had his own foundry and carried out orders for churches and monasteries from different parts of Moscow. His workshop completed an order for a casting in 1702 Resurrection bell for the bell tower of Ivan the Great. The stigma of the master stood on Alarm bell The Tsar's Tower of the Kremlin, subsequently "punished" by Catherine II for calling for the Plague Riot.
Motorin made a small model and sent the drawings and estimates to St. Petersburg. Consideration and approval of his project took about two years, after which permission was obtained and foundry work began.
How the Tsar Bell was cast
Russian foundry worker Ivan Motorin started to implement his own project at the beginning 1733 years … The huge dimensions of the future monument to the era of the reign of Anna Ioannovna required manufacturing on site, and therefore it was decided to cast the bell directly on the territory of the Kremlin, where it was supposed to be installed.
A pit was dug on the Ivanovskaya Square of the Moscow Kremlin, the depth of which was 10 meters. Foundry furnaces were placed around, each designed for 50 tons of metal. Brick gutters were folded in order to pour the metal from the furnaces into the mold. The space between the walls of the pit and the shape of the future casting was rammed so that the casing could withstand the pressure of molten metal. Ivan Motorin, taking into account the wishes of the Empress about the size, requested additional raw materials, since the remaining from the Great Assumption Bell was not enough for him.
The first melting took place in November 1734 after a solemn blessing in the Kremlin's Assumption Cathedral. 83 people were involved in the work on Ivanovskaya Square. The melting was fraught with difficulties and not everything went as smoothly as we would like. The stoves periodically broke down, the hearths in the furnaces rose and the metal left, and repair work in a hurry became the cause of a fire hazard.
The author and project manager died a year after the start of work. Further casting was supervised by his son, Mikhail Motorin … He attracted about 400 people to work, and as a result November 24, 1735 a copper alloy was released into the bell shape. The casting process lasted 46 minutes, and in each of them the mold took about seven tons of metal. After the casting was completed and the bell cooled down, inscriptions and decorations were applied to its body.
Shard and rise
A year and a half after the installation of the Tsar Bell on the Ivanovskaya Square of the Kremlin in Moscow began Trinity fire, which, in terms of the scope and number of burned buildings, was second only to the later, which happened during the war with the French. The wooden structure above the bell pit caught fire, and during rescue operations The Tsar Bell collapsed and got crackedthat pierced his body through and through. On impact, an 11-ton chunk broke off from the bell.
There is a version that the bell cracked during casting, which was accompanied by many problems and technological errors. Other researchers believe that the shard appeared after the fall of the Tsar Bell during its rise after casting. Application coinage also did not contribute to the integrity of the body: the body of the bell was constantly cooled with water so that the work on the application of inscriptions and decorative elements did not melt it.
The Tsar Bell lay in the ground for about a century. In 1821, the pit with it was surrounded by stairs and everyone could look at the capital's landmark of grandiose proportions. All projects to raise and restore the integrity of the bell were rejected as untenable, and only in 1827-1831 years an architect Ivan Mironovsky managed to develop a viable plan for the installation of the brainchild of the foundry workers of the Motorins on a pedestal.
The project brought to life Auguste Montferrand … Only the preparation for the ascent took about six months, and the first attempt was unsuccessful: the bell was too heavy and the ropes could not stand it. The second attempt was made in June 1836, increasing the number of winches and once again calculating everything to the millimeter. This time, Montferrand succeeded, and the Tsar Bell was solemnly erected on a pedestal next to the Ivan the Great Bell Tower.
Figures and facts
Like any landmark, the Tsar Bell gives rise to many rumors and legends, and some figures and facts about him become the subject of special interest not only for researchers, but also for tourists:
- The mine corps laboratory analyzed the alloy from which the Tsar Bell was cast. It turned out that the monument of Russian foundry art is 84.5% copper, 13.2% tin, and 1.5% sulfur. In addition, the Tsar Bell contains 72 kilograms of gold and more than half a ton of silver.
- The height of the Tsar Bell is 6, 24 meters, diameter - 6, 6 meters. The masterpiece of Russian foundry workers weighs about 200 tons.
- Mikhail Motorin, who finished casting work after the death of his father, was awarded a cash prize of 1,000 rubles and was elevated to the rank of workshop master of foundries.
- Another bell of Russia was called "Tsar". It was cast in 1748 for the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. The bell weighed 64 tons. It existed until 1930, when it was destroyed by the Bolsheviks, like many other church property. The Tsar Bell in Sergiev Posad sounded again in 2003. It was made at the Baltic plant in St. Petersburg, and today the Lavrovsky Tsar Bell is the largest operating bell in our country. It weighs 72 tons.
Modern advances in industry and science make it possible to cast a bell of even larger size and weight. However, its sound will not be very pleasant: the lion's share of the sound waves created by such a bell will be in the infrared range and will cause discomfort and anxiety for the listeners.
