Tsar Bell

The Tsar Bell is the largest bell in the world, mounted on a pedestal near the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in the Moscow Kremlin. Including its mounting loops, it stands 6.24 meters tall, measures 6.6 meters in diameter, and weighs close to 202 tonnes. The bell has never rung for its intended purpose: during preparations to lift it, a large fragment broke off. Today the monument is part of the collection of the Moscow Kremlin Museums.

The current bell had several predecessors. The first, cast in 1599 and weighing about 33.6 tonnes, cracked after half a century of service due to a fire. The next, weighing 130 tonnes, was cast in 1654 by Moscow founders led by Danila Matveev, using metal from the broken bell; it soon cracked from the blow of its clapper, was recast by master Alexander Grigoriev, and eventually was also destroyed by fire in 1701. Its remains formed the basis for the new casting.

In 1730, Empress Anna Ioannovna ordered a bell weighing about 200 tonnes to be created in memory of her reign. A mechanic named Germain, invited from France, considered the commission impossible and refused, so the work was entrusted to the founder Ivan Motorin and his son Mikhail. The mold and furnaces were built right on Ivanovskaya Square in the Kremlin, with a casting pit ten meters deep dug and four furnaces installed. The first casting attempt in November 1734 failed due to a fire in the lifting mechanism, and shortly afterward, in August 1735, Ivan Motorin died, and his son continued the work.

The successful casting took place on November 23, 1735: filling the mold with metal took about 46 minutes at a rate of roughly 7 tonnes per minute. The finished surface was decorated with reliefs depicting Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Anna Ioannovna, as well as images of Christ, the Mother of God, the Apostle Peter, and John the Baptist — the carving was done by master Fyodor Medvedev. The bell could not be lifted from the pit right away, and in 1737, during the Trinity fire, the wooden structures above the pit burned down; the bell fell from its scaffolding and developed ten cracks, losing a fragment weighing more than eleven tonnes.

The cracked bell remained in the pit for the following nine decades, despite attempts to lift it in 1792 and 1819. The final lifting project was prepared by architect Ivan Mironovsky and carried out by French engineer Auguste de Montferrand: after an unsuccessful first attempt with broken ropes, a second attempt using twenty winches succeeded on July 23, 1836, and took just over forty minutes. The bell was placed on a pedestal faced with white stone, designed by Montferrand, next to the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, and crowned with a decorative orb, which is how the name “Tsar Bell” came to be fixed.

Since its installation, the bell has never been moved, and its broken fragment is displayed alongside it as part of the composition. The unique combination of grandiose scale, complex 18th-century casting technology, and artistic decoration has made the monument one of the main attractions of the Kremlin, drawing large numbers of visitors from around the world every year.