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TOCSIN TOWER
1495 Architect is unknown
Tocsin Tower
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38 metres high. This was one of the last towers to be built. It got its name from the bell hanging in it which used to summon the townsfolk in times of danger. In 1680 it was topped by a cube adorned with slender semicolumns, a four-faceted tent roof with double listening apertures and a watch-tower with a bell. In 1771 the tolling of the bell marked the outbreak of a popular uprising against the boyars and high clergy in Moscow. After cruelly suppressing the uprising, Empress Catherine the Great ordered the bell's tongue to be removed, which was common practice at that time in Russia. For more than thirty years the bell hung "tongueless". In 1803 it was taken down and transferred to the Arsenal and in 1821 to the Armoury where it remains to this day.
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