Below are some other images of the Ivan the
Great Bell Tower.
Actually, the Tower
derived its name not from Ivan III, but from the name of the earlier church
tower, honoring
St. John Climacus (525-605), which stood on the site. Ivan III did order
the construction of the new tower, which took from 1505 to 1508. In 1600 on the
orders of Boris Godunov, an addition was added so that the Tower reached a
final height of over 260 feet; by far the tallest building in Moscow for a
long time. Napoleon, nice guy that he was, tried to
blow up the Tower before he retreated from Moscow in 1812, but
although the explosion levelled the adjoining buildings, the Bell Tower
survived with only a small crack.
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