The Moscow Kremlin and Red Square: Kremin Guide

Pine-Grove Tower

      54.05 metres high including the star. It was with this tower that the eminent fifteenth-century architect Pietro Antonio Solario, or Pyotr Fryazin as he was called in Russia, began his work in the Kremlin.       The tower has an unusual shape: a powerful cube supports three more stepped tiers followed by an octagonal watch-tower with an open arcade which is adorned by semicolumns and kokoshniks. This is topped by a slender tent roof with a ruby star. The decorative tent roof was added in the 1680s, together with a barbican which was placed not in front, as in the case of other Kremlin towers, but at the north side. The slight asymmetry of the whole structure is explained by the irregular terrain. The tower originally had a carriage-way, but when the barbican was built also with a gateway, the passage through the tower was blocked up. On either side of the gate you can still see openings like keyholes. These were for the chains of the drawbridge across the River Neglinnaya. When the river was enclosed in an underground pipe, the drawbridge was removed.
      The Pine-Grove (Borovitskiye) Gate led to the Kremlin's domestic outbuildings and had a purely utilitarian function.
      In 1812 the tower was damaged when the neighbouring Water Tower was blown up by retreating Napoleon's army. The upper section of the tent roof collapsed. It was restored in 1817.