Spasskaya Tower
— — the clock the country sets its watch by.
Not only on a wall.
“The clock tower at the eastern wall of the Kremlin, facing Red Square. Pietro Antonio Solari raised the gate in 1491; the brick pyramid and spire came later, in 1625, with a Scottish clockmaker named Christopher Galloway. The chimes mark Moscow time. A red ruby star has crowned it since 1937.
Spasskaya Tower, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Spasskaya Tower stands at the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, opening onto Red Square through the Saviour Gate. The Milanese architect Pietro Antonio Solari built the lower brick tower in 1491 as part of the late-fifteenth-century rebuilding of the Kremlin walls under Ivan III. The upper tiers and the tented spire were added between 1624 and 1625 by the Russian master Bazhen Ogurtsov and the English clockmaker Christopher Galloway. The tower rises about seventy-one metres including the star, the tallest of the twenty Kremlin towers.
The lower section is red brick laid over a limestone base, in the same Italian Renaissance style Solari brought from Milan. The upper tiers shift to a Russian tent roof of brick and tile, four corner pinnacles, and a gilded ornament that once carried a two-headed imperial eagle. In 1935 the eagle was replaced with a five-pointed star; the current ruby-glass star, lit from inside, has stood since 1937. The Saviour Icon of Christ once set above the gate was rediscovered in 2010 after eighty years under plaster.
The tower itself is not open to the public; it sits inside the working perimeter of the Kremlin. The exterior is best viewed from Red Square, especially from the steps of Saint Basil's Cathedral or from across the square at the State Historical Museum. The chimes ring on the quarter hour and play the Russian national anthem at noon and midnight. The square is reached on foot from Okhotny Ryad and Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro stations, both a short walk to the northwest.