The Tsar Bell boasts a whole pedigree. This monument of foundry art was created from a bell by master Alexander Grigoriev, which crashed in 1701. He, in turn, had his own predecessor. The “grandfather” of this family is considered to be a bell cast in the era of Boris Godunov.

Anna Ioannovna ordered to increase Grigoriev’s brainchild, as a result of which its weight increased to 202 tons. At first, they looked for foreign specialists for the project. Minich's son turned to the French mechanic Germain, but he refused to go to Russia, mistaking the story about the Tsar Bell for a joke. As a result, the important order went to the Moscow foundry worker Ivan Motorin, whose name is immortalized in the inscription: “This bell was cast by the Russian master Ivan Fedorov, son Motorin, with his son Mikhail Motorin.”

Approval of the project, preparation and construction of the furnaces took more than two years (1,214,000 bricks were used), so the actual casting work began in 1733. A miniature model of the bell weighing about 170 kg was pre-cast. It, along with drawings and models of lifting mechanisms, was sent for approval to St. Petersburg. They were going to raise the “Tsar” to the bell tower of Ivan the Great. To supervise the casting, a special commission was created in the Senate, which regularly transmitted news about Motorin’s successes to the capital. In addition to the metal from Grigoriev’s previous bell, the new master used the Siberian copper and English tin prescribed to him. He was helped by blacksmiths, masons, carpenters, mechanics, carvers, sculptors and many other workers. In total, about 200 people were involved.

The labor-intensive work on creating the Tsar Bell began with the digging of a ten-meter-deep hole on Ivanovo Square in the Kremlin. The foundation was laid in it, on which the template was installed. The shape of the inside of the bell was made from its shape. The materials used were bricks, clay and lard. The molding clay mass was applied in several layers. Linen fibers, twine and wire were laid between the layers. This was done in order to avoid cracking of the mold after drying.

Around the casting pit, Motorin installed four smelting furnaces, each of which could hold up to 50 tons of metal. During smelting, two furnaces became unusable, and the copper in them was damaged. Motorin turned to cannon masters for advice. They collectively decided to continue smelting in the two remaining furnaces. The shortage of metal was made up for with 600 small bells, which were specially brought from the Cannon Yard, and even copper money. Then another misfortune happened - one of the cars caught fire. The fire could not be extinguished immediately, despite the prompt work of special fire-fighting teams. As a result, the lifting machine burned out, and the collapsed logs fell onto the bell mold.

The incident forced Motorin to stop work and begin rechecking the mold (to make sure whether casting could be continued). The master, who had a hard time surviving a chain of failures, did not have time to complete the work he had begun. On August 17, 1735 he died. The place of the deceased was taken by his son Mikhail Motorin. The casting of the Tsar Bell was completed in November without incident.

In 1737, Moscow was engulfed by the terrible Trinity Fire (so named after the Trinity Day celebrated at that time). At this time, the bell still remained in the pit where it was cast. There are several versions of what happened on that ill-fated day, but most likely the hole was filled with water to protect the bell from fire, as a result of which it cracked and burst. An 11-ton piece broke off from the giant, and the Trinity Fire gave rise to a saying in folklore: “Moscow burned down from a penny candle.”

The Tsar Bell rested in its pit for many, many years. Several attempts were made to raise the work of foundry art. In 1792 and 1819. failure awaited the Muscovites. Finally, the architect Ivan Mironovsky prepared new project. In 1836, it was carried out by Auguste Montferrand, the architect of St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Alexander Column in St. Petersburg. The landmark was installed on a pedestal, on which it rests today. The name “Tsar Bell” came into use after casting. Initially it was called the Assumption Great Bell.

One of the most interesting and notable historical attractions of the Moscow Kremlin is. But it amazes not with its strong sound (it never rang), but with its enormous size and weight. The Tsar Bell is located on Ivanovskaya Square and everyone can admire it. Its height with a lintel is 6.24 m, its diameter is 6.6 m, and its weight is 202 tons.

The Tsar Bell was cast by the family of famous foundry masters Motorins (father Ivan and son Mikhail) in the 17th century. Undoubtedly, the Tsar Bell is their best and most ambitious work, however, the Motorins also cast many other bells and cannons. Moreover, they tried not only for Moscow churches - their bells, for example, can be found in St. Petersburg and Kyiv.

The history of the creation of the Tsar Bell

The current Tsar Bell had several successors. The very first bell weighed 40 tons and was cast in 1600. In the middle of the 17th century it crashed and it was decided to smelt a new one, but of a much larger size. A new bell was cast and placed at the bell tower of Tsar Ivan the Great. Its weight was 130 tons. But he also could not live long, crashing in 1654 during the Christmas bells. They also decided not to stop there and commissioned professional foundry worker A. Grigoriev to cast a new bell, but this time weighing 160 tons.

The next bell was also not destined to ring for long - it broke in 1701 during a strong fire. And only 30 years later, Empress Anna Ioanovna made an attempt to revive the Tsar Bell. The preparatory work alone took about 4 years.

In order to cast a new bell, a special mold was created on Ivanovskaya Square, installed in a 10-meter hole. The walls of the mold were reinforced with brick and special oak inserts, and an iron grate was placed at the bottom. For the foundation of this structure, it was decided to use oak piles. After the bell shape was placed in the pit, the metal melted in four smelters was poured into it. The material was the old Tsar Bell, which was broken during a fire. The manager and executor of the project was Ivan Motorin.

On November 26, 1734, after a service was held in the Assumption Cathedral, the smelting furnaces were flooded. And so, when it seemed that nothing should interfere with the casting of the bell, two smelting furnaces malfunctioned and molten metal began to flow through them, which led to a large fire. And some time later Ivan Motorin died...

The son of Ivan Motorin, Mikhail, undertook to complete the creation of the Tsar Bell. On November 25, 1735, the last version of the bell was cast in 1 hour and 12 minutes, after which it began to be decorated with coinage. However, another fire that occurred in May 1737 again interfered with the fate of the bell. As a result, the logs that served as the frame of the casing in the casting pit caught fire. The bell began to heat up and in order to prevent it from melting again, it was decided to fill it with water. The Tsar Bell could not withstand such a temperature difference and a piece broke off from it, weighing more than 11 tons. After the fire, the Tsar Bell remained in the foundry pit, remaining there for almost 100 years.

Only after the war with Napoleon, during the restoration of the Kremlin in 1836, the Tsar Bell was installed on a special pedestal. This is how it can be seen today. The Tsar Bell became a masterpiece of the foundry art of Tsarist Russia. When talking about the Tsar Bell, one cannot fail to mention one thing wonderful person- Augusta Montferrand. He gained fame as an excellent craftsman in working with heavy structures after the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral, where he was the chief architect. It was he who organized the raising of the Tsar Bell to a pedestal built according to his own design. People were amazed to see the power and grandeur of the raised Tsar Bell.
Augustus Montferrand also cast a copper orb with a cross mounted on top of the Tsar Bell. The cross is not gold, as many people think, but gilded. Nevertheless, this does not make the view of the Tsar Bell any less spectacular. On the bas-reliefs decorating the Tsar Bell you can see Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, under whom the previous bell was created, as well as the inspiration for the creation of the new one - Empress Anna Ioannovna. Under the image of the Empress there is an inscription about the creators of the Tsar Bell - Ivan and Mikhail Motorin. Also on the bell are depicted Christian saints - Christ with the Mother of God, the Apostle Peter and John the Baptist. However, due to a previous fire in 1737, the minting was not completely completed. The master who was engaged in coinage was Fedor Medvedev, whose name was established only recently.

The Legend of the Tsar Bell

There is an incredible legend about the Tsar Bell. According to it, the bell was cast during the time of Peter I (late XVII - beginning of XVIII centuries). When the Tsar returned to Moscow after Battle of Poltava, all the bells rang in honor of the victory. Only one bell did not ring, despite the efforts of the bell ringer to shake up the bell tongue. In a rage, Peter I sent a company of soldiers to help him, but they only tore off his tongue, and the Tsar Bell never began to ring. People said that the bell was more stubborn than the king. In his hands Peter I held the one taken from Swedish king baton. In anger because the bell did not want to announce the victory, the king hit it with a club. A piece broke off from the Tsar Bell from the blow, and it itself sank into the ground with a roar. Old Believers and sectarians believe that on the day of the Last Judgment, the Tsar Bell will rise and begin to ring.

• The Tsar Bell never had a tongue. The one next to it was taken from another bell.
• 525 kg of silver and 72 kg of gold were added to the melt, which was supposed to improve the sound.
• Several times it was proposed to solder the bell to use it for its intended purpose. However, experts assure that it will not be possible to obtain clear sound.
• In 1941, the bell housed the communications center of the Kremlin regiment. To prevent it from shining and being visible to German bombers, it was specially painted.

Do you want to be healthy and live long? Then write down the recipe:

Holy water on an empty stomach, prayers twice a day, and on Sundays the ringing of bells. Are you laughing? But look what modern scientists say about all this.

Prayers through the eyes of scientists

"Prayer Watch"

I'll start with prayers. What is your understanding of prayer? Everything is correct - communication with God. And for scientists, this is also an altered state of the brain.

Employees of the Institute named after. V.M. Bekhtereva, having taken electroencephalograms of Orthodox priests during prayers, came to the conclusion that at this time their cerebral cortex .... turns off completely. That is, a state of clear consciousness appears during a complete shutdown of the brain. Before this discovery, it was believed that the human brain can work in one of three modes - wakefulness, REM sleep or slow-wave sleep, but now another state of brain function has been discovered, which is called the “fourth state” - this is “prayerful wakefulness”.

During prayer, the frequency of the brain decreases to 2-3 Hz. In an adult, this frequency is observed only during slow-wave sleep, and during wakefulness only in infants up to 2 months. Scientists even joked kindly that the words of Christ “Be like children and be saved” can also apply to the state of the brain. Scientists who have studied “prayer watchfulness” unanimously agree that the fourth state of the brain is just as necessary for physical and spiritual health as the other three. In this state, a person is healed of illnesses and restored mentally.

"Our Father" against diseases

What do you say to the fact that prayer kills harmful germs and viruses? But this is the conclusion that Angelina Malakhovskaya (member of the Orthodox Scientists Union) and American scientists came to. Pathogenic microbes are killed not only in the patient’s body, but also in the water, which is marked with the sign of the cross and over which the prayer “Our Father” is read. The scientist took plain water from different natural sources, which contained harmful microbes and viruses, for example Staphylococcus aureus, a prayer was read over it and the number of pathogenic microbes was reduced by 100 times. Therefore, dear readers, the sign of the cross on food is not just a fad of priests, it is important for your health.

But that’s not all - when you read a prayer or baptize food, the negative information component is also erased. I have seen priests who, before taking money from the table, first baptize it so that harmful information does not pass through it (money passes through many different hands, including people with bad thoughts).

Professor Mitchell Krushoff, a cardiologist at Duke University, concluded that the rate of recovery of patients thanks to prayer increases by 93%.

In addition, scientists claim that prayers can: quickly reduce high blood pressure, reduce blood cholesterol levels, normalize metabolic processes and heart rate, restore peace of mind, extinguish anger, despondency and depression.

Scientists about holy water

Employees of the Moscow Institute of Information Wave Technologies claim that electromagnetic radiation(EMP) of consecrated (holy) water from different sources are identical, but at the same time very different from the EMP of simple water and even “silver water”.

So why does holy water heal, according to scientists?

It turned out that the EMR curve of holy water completely coincides with the EMR of a healthy organ. Moreover, if you add holy water to plain water, then the EMR of plain water changes to the EMR of holy water. Holy water, as in the example of “fertilizing” plain water, when entering the body of the body, transmits to it, through the body fluid, a strong impulse of health.

Moreover, scientists claim that plain water becomes holy even if you add 1 spoon of holy water to 60 liters of plain water.

Interesting fact

• In tap water, over which the sign of the cross has been made by a simple believing parishioner, the optical density increases by almost 1.5 times;
• When consecrated by a priest, 2.5 times;
• By a baptized but not a believer, water increases its optical density by only 10%.

Bell ringing according to scientists

Swedish scientists proved that bell ringing kills (thanks to ultra and infrasonic waves) pathogenic microorganisms back in the 70s of the last century, although this was known in Rus' for a very long time. It was not for nothing that during pestilences and enemy invasions in Rus', the bell alarm constantly sounded. The ringing of church bells is sometimes called an icon in sound.

From what has been proven

The ringing of bells kills for several kilometers:

• Influenza viruses;
• Jaundice virus;
• Smallpox;

Kills in a few seconds:

• Plague bacteria;
• Typhoid shelf;
• Cholera;
• Tuberculosis.

There is a hypothesis that the rampant typhoid epidemics in the post-revolutionary 20s were directly related to the ban on church bell ringing.

• The activity of microbes that have “heard enough” of bell ringing or choral singing drops by an average of 40%;
• Bell ringers do not suffer from colds;
• In the 17th century, the body of the dead Novgorod Metropolitan Athos stood without signs of decay for 11 weeks under the bells of the monastery;
• Mathematicians have proven that the radiation of a bell in free space, in its direction, has the shape of a volumetric cross;
• There are many cases of healing of the “possessed” by the ringing of bells;
• Low tones of bells are more favorable for humans than high ones;
• A bell ringing recorded on a medium and reproduced on an acoustic device “does not work” like a “live” bell;
• According to Shipunov in pre-revolutionary Russia the potential for sound radiation from the bells was such that it could deflect the trajectory of a medium-range missile. Russia was under an invisible, protective sound dome.
• Bell ringing is used to treat mental illness.

RESULTS

According to American scientists (scientists from medical college Albert Einstein and Yeshiva University) regular attendance at church services, at least once a week, improves health by 20%. If you are an atheist or skeptic, maybe it’s time to think and “accept” God? After all, these are all facts from scientists, but you probably believe them? If you are a believer, then may this post give you faith and health.

November 25, 2015 marked the 280th anniversary of one of the most gigantic, but unfortunately silent bells in the world. The famous Tsar bell, standing on a pedestal in the Moscow Kremlin, has never rung like that even once in its history.

But, in fairness, it is worth saying that the bell was cast for very practical purposes, and its silence is the same coincidence of circumstances as the notorious tilt of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

A silent giant with a tormented fate today serves as a unique monument to Russian foundry art of the 18th century. The fate of my grandfather, a long-liver, is unenviable, and over the course of his almost three centuries he has undergone many trials.

MOST INTERESTING FACTS

Today it is known that this is one of the largest bells in the world. Due to his size and excess weight, he ranks second in the world rankings. Its mass is 203 tons, and it is second only to the Great Bell of Dhammazedi (Burma), which weighs 297 tons. But there is one interesting addition that allows our grandfather, the birthday boy, to rise to the first line of the rating.

The fact is that in 1608, during the internecine wars in Burma, the Portuguese mercenary Felipe de Brito e Nicote captured the Shwedagon Pagoda and stole the bell, intending to use it for cannons. However, when transported by water at the confluence of the Bago and Yangon rivers, the rafts on which the bell was located capsized and it sank.

The Great Bell is still in the same place under a layer of silt, but all attempts to bring it to the surface have so far been unsuccessful.

So, 203 tons of thunderous silence reigned. Its impressive size is due to the ambitions of Empress Anna Ioannovna, who ordered that a new giant be cast from pieces of a broken old bell. The fact is that our king-bell has a rich pedigree, with no less rich karma, unfortunately more sad than rich.

It itself was cast in 1730 “from what was there” - from the remains of a bell made in 1654 and weighing 128 tons. It took about a hundred people to ring it! The large Assumption Tsar Bell, unlike our Tsar Bell, stood for 24 years after casting before a craftsman was found who managed to lift it and hang it in the Assumption Belfry. This event happened in 1679. Even then, its voice was considered one of the loudest in the capital, drowning out the voices of all other bells.

However, on June 19, 1701, during a fire in the Kremlin, the bell fell and broke. It is noteworthy that the bell that broke in the fire was also cast from the remains of the bell, which was made in haste by order of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Its dimensions were more modest, and it itself rang only a few times, and on one of the first lord's holidays, during the bell, it split into many pieces. It is curious that the master died of the plague in the same year, after the incident. Coincidence.

It is noteworthy that this bell was cast from its predecessor. IN early XVII V. By order of Boris Godunov, a very large bell was cast, which was called the Tsar Bell. This was, as it were, the great-grandfather of the current Tsar Bell, which now stands in the Kremlin. In order to hang it, they cut down a turret made of oak logs next to “Ivan the Great”, where they placed the bell at a height of 4 m from the ground. It weighed “only” 35 tons and also crashed during a fire.

The Polish nobleman Samuil Maskevich, who saw how it was rung, says that two ropes were tied to the tongue of the bell, which 12 people each took hold of and pulled the tongue alternately in one direction or the other. There was a low, solemn hum.

As you and I found out, the pedigree is long, but the karma is bad.

So, in 1730, Empress Anna Ioannovna ordered a new one to be cast from the surviving pieces, with the addition of metal, and to increase the weight of the bell to 10 thousand pounds. The son of Field Marshal Minich was instructed to find a master in Paris for this work. Minich offered this work to the royal mechanic Germain, but he considered it a joke to cast a bell of such a size.

After all approvals, the bell was cast by Russian craftsmen Ivan Motorin and his son Mikhail Motorin in 1733-1735 at the Cannon Yard.

The bell was finally cast on November 25, 1735, after a year and a half preparatory work. Unforeseen situations constantly arose during casting.

During casting on November 28, 1734, an accident occurred. Copper from the smelting furnaces not only flowed into the “bell sample”, but also spilled throughout the foundry, which led to a fire. It took Mikhail Motorin and his assistants a year to eliminate its consequences.

Ivan Motorin died before finishing the casting, and his work was completed by his son Mikhail.

On November 25, the final stage of casting the bell began. To prevent a recurrence of the fire, about 400 people with fire pipes were stationed at the foundry pit all the time. The metal, melted in four smelting furnaces over 36 hours, began to be poured into the mold. The casting itself took just 1 hour and 12 minutes.

The inscription on the bell says that it was cast in 1733 by Ivan Motorin, although in fact it was cast in 1735 by Mikhail Motorin.

The inaccuracy of the inscription indicates that the Tsar Bell was cast according to the original mold.

The calculated value of the mass of the bell is given in many reference books, but it is not entirely correct.

The true mass of this giant is 12,327 poods 19 pounds = 201 tons 924 kg = 200 tons, with an accuracy of ten tons, since the exact value of a pood is 16.380 kg, and a pound is 0.4095 kg.

Height - 6 meters 24 centimeters, diameter 6 meters 60 centimeters.

After the bell cooled down, the casing was removed from it, and the minters went down into the casting pit. They worked on the drawings on the surface of the bell, since after casting the images are not clear enough. This work took a year and a half and was not completed due to another fire.

On May 20, 1737, during the Trinity Fire in Moscow, a wooden building above the pit in which the bell stood caught fire. Burning logs began to fall into the pit. To prevent the bell from melting, the people who came running began to pour water on the hot metal. As a result of rapid and uneven cooling, the bell developed 10 longitudinal through cracks and a significant piece weighing about 700 pounds (11.5 tons) broke off from it. Therefore, the bell was left in the foundry pit, where it remained for about 100 years. According to another old version, he fell and broke.

However, modern research they question the fact that the bell, made of ductile bell bronze, could have cracked during a fire, and suggest that the cracks arose due to violations in the technology (the bell, which cooled after casting, could have been left on the rod and cracked due to crimping) , and a fire could be a convenient excuse.

This version is supported by the fact that in 1736 Motorin received only 1,000 rubles for casting the Tsar Bell and the rank of foundry shopmaster “for his labors and for the sake of updating the bell factory,” which was damaged by a fire. And later, for casting bells for the Novodevichy Convent and the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, he asks for 8,000 rubles per bell

The damage to the bell was so serious that work on finishing its decorations was stopped, and it lay in a foundry pit for about 100 years.

Only in 1836 was it lifted from there and installed on a pedestal near “Ivan the Great”.

In 1979, during the restoration of the bell, a piece of metal was taken from its crack and made chemical analysis. Research has shown that the bell is cast from bronze, that is, an alloy of copper and tin, and alloying elements that are added to the alloy to give it certain properties.

According to an analysis carried out in the laboratory of the mine body, the alloy contains copper - 84.51%, tin - 13.21%, sulfur - 1.25%, gold - 0.036% (72 kg), silver - 0.25% (525 kg)

After the restoration of the bell, its relief decorations became clearly visible. You can see ceremonial portraits of Anna Ioannovna and Alexei Mikhailovich, images of saints, ornaments, and inscriptions. All these decorations were carved from wood by sculptor Fyodor Medvedev and then pressed onto inner surface casing.

Vasily Kobelev, Pyotr Galkin, Pyotr Serebryakov, Pyotr Kokhtev, who studied pedestal and molding work abroad by order of Peter I, took part in the work on decorating the bell.

1890 Muscovites carefully study the famous masterpiece of Russian foundry art on Ivan the Great Square

The Tsar Bell never rang - we already know that. Let us only add that a tongue was never even cast for him. And the one that lies on the pedestal was taken from another.

The largest bell of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra is also called “Tsar”. The Tsar Bell, cast in 1748, weighed 4 thousand pounds (64 tons), but was destroyed in 1930. In 2004, a new “Tsar Bell” weighing 72 tons was raised to the bell tower of the Lavra.

The Tsar Bell is depicted on thousand-ruble White Guard banknotes issued by General Denikin in Crimea during Civil War. The money, which depreciated almost instantly and had virtually no purchasing power, was popularly called “bells.”

In 1941, the communications center of the Kremlin regiment was located in the Tsar Bell, and it itself was repainted and covered with a protective net to protect it from air strikes.

From time to time there is renewed talk about soldering the bell, but experts say that in this case it will not have a clear sound.

Over time, the unique monument became one of the reasons for the appearance of an anecdote about great country, where there is a Tsar Cannon that doesn’t fire, a Tsar Bell that doesn’t ring, etc.

The Tsar Bell is a monument to the foundry art of Russian craftsmen, about which it is written “that bells of such size and such beauty cannot be found in any other kingdom in the whole world.”

At least, this is precisely what is evidenced by the inscription on the white marble board, mounted by order of the architect August Montferrand on the front side of the pedestal on which the monument of Russian foundry art of the 18th century stands: “This bell was cast in 1733 by order of Mr. Imp. Anna Ioannovna. He stayed in the land for one hundred and three years and by the will of the most pious Mr. Emperor Nicholas I delivered in the summer of August 1836 on the 4th day" Details of this entertaining story are presented below in the form of interesting facts.

1. The first heavyweight bells appeared in Rus' in the 30s of the 16th century, when the foundry master Nemchinov first made a bell weighing about two thousand kilograms, and after him another - over eight thousand. However, the “great-grandfather” of that same Tsar Bell is considered to be the Great Assumption, cast by order of Boris Godunov Andrey Chokhov. According to eyewitnesses, the giant bell weighed almost 18 tons, and in order to set its tongue in motion, the strength of twenty-four men was needed. Unfortunately, this “miracle” was destroyed during one of the fires in the middle of the 17th century.

He was replaced by order of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1654 by the famous foundry master Danilo Danilov and his son Emelyan They cast a new one, even larger and heavier. The bell, weighing about 131 tons, was lifted onto the wooden belfry of the bell tower of Ivan the Great, but it hung there until the first strong blow, from which it crumbled into pieces.
The next year, 20-year-old master Alexander Grigoriev volunteered to cast another giant from the wreckage of the Danilov bell in 10 months. As a result, he got the Great Assumption Bell, which was in no way inferior in weight to its predecessor. He served until June 19, 1701. On this day there was a fire. The wooden buildings of the Church of the Nativity burned down, the bell fell and broke into many fragments. Later they were used to make the real Tsar Bell.

June 26, 1730 Empress Anna Ioanovna issued a decree according to which foundry masters had to make a bell weighing at least 160 tons.

2. Count Minich began searching for craftsmen on behalf of the Empress. First, he went to Paris to find craftsmen, where he offered to take on the bell to the royal mechanic Germenu, but he, having heard about the weight of the product, took it all as a joke and refused. Although, according to other sources, the very surprised and puzzled Frenchman nevertheless agreed to draw up project documents.

However, Russian artisans began casting the bell: hereditary foundry worker Ivan Fedorovich Motorin and his son Mikhail.

3. To begin with, Motorin Sr. made the necessary drawings, cast a model of the future bell, reduced a thousand times, and began to calculate how to raise the bell to the Ivanovo Bell Tower. Having completed all the main documents, Ivan Fedorovich sent them to St. Petersburg for approval. Permission to make the bell came only in 1931.

4. A casting pit 10 meters deep was located in courtyard Kremlin, between the Chudov Monastery and the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great. Its walls were reinforced with oak timber and lined with brick. The bottom was strengthened with oak piles and an iron lattice was placed on them, which became the basis for the bell shape. A clay rod was installed in the center of the pit, which determined the internal volume of the future bell. Then a mold was made from clay.

5. Four furnaces intended for melting metal began working on November 26, 1734 after the solemn service in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin. However, on November 28, the hearths of two furnaces rose and the copper disappeared. At the council of the craftsmen, it was decided to continue smelting work in working furnaces, adding the missing metal to them. To do this, 600 bells, 27 tons each, and monetary copper with a total weight of 68 tons were urgently brought from the Moscow Cannon Yard. However, on the night of November 29, one of the overloaded furnaces leaks. It was decided to suspend work. At the same time, the most important trouble awaited the foundry workers ahead.

6. In the midst restoration work On August 19, 1735, Ivan Fedorovich Motorin dies. The business of creating the bell is headed by his son Mikhail.

7. The Tsar Bell, with ears 6.24 meters high and 6.6 meters in diameter, was completely cast on the night of November 25, 1735. Its weight exceeded 200 tons.

At least 250 tons of working material were prepared for casting. In addition to copper, the craftsmen used tin, as well as 72 kg of gold and 525 kg of silver.

The last melting of the metal lasted 36 hours, and pouring the mold took only 36 minutes. At least 6 tons of metal were received in each unit of time.

8. Initially, there was no provision for placing the name of the foundryman on the bell. In order to leave his “autograph,” Ivan Motorin, through the artillery office, submitted a corresponding petition to the Senate, from where the document was forwarded for approval by the Empress herself. And only after that the inscription appeared on the bell: “This bell was run by the Russian master Ivan Fedorov, son Motorin, with his son Mikhail Motorin.”

9. From the moment the bell was cast and until the first half of 1737, minting continued– artistic adaptation of “The Tsar”.

By the way, the sculptor who worked on the decorative decoration of the giant bell was trained in the craft in Italy Fedor Medvedev. He was helped by: Andrey Selivanov, pedestal craftsmen Vasily Kobelev, Pyotr Galkin, Pyotr Kokhteev, Pyotr Serebryakov and molder Lukovnikov.
Interestingly, the sculptor Carlo Rastrelli was originally supposed to work on the bell. However, he asked such a price that his services were refused.

10. In May 1737, the Trinity Fire broke out. Burning logs began to fall into the pit with the bell. As a result, the red-hot bell was filled with water, causing 11 cracks to appear in it and a piece weighing eleven and a half tons to break off.

However, some modern researchers question this fact, arguing that the cracks appeared due to incorrect bell manufacturing technology.

11. There were only three attempts to remove the Tsar Bell from the ground. The first two - in 1792 and 1819 - were unsuccessful. The architect August Montferrand took up the bell for the third time in 1836. He was instructed to lift the “Tsar” and install it on a pedestal, because due to numerous damages it was impossible to use it for its intended purpose.

By order of Montferrand, wooden scaffolding with a system of blocks, ropes and gates was installed above the foundry pit. However, it was not possible to pull out the bell immediately. The first attempt failed due to the fact that the bell stuck to the iron grating on which it stood - several ropes simply could not stand it under the excessive weight and burst. The new rise was scheduled for 5 a.m. on July 23, 1836. After preparation, which took about one hour, at approximately 6:05 the soldiers began to remove the Tsar Bell from the pit. And after 42 minutes he found himself on the surface.

Three days later, on July 26, it was installed on an octagonal pedestal made according to Montferrand's design from blocks of white limestone and red brick, fastened together with iron brackets and forged pins.
The Tsar Bell still stands on this very pedestal today. The front side of the stand is decorated with a plaque on which Montferrand indicated August 4 as the day the bell was raised from the ground. Researchers believe that the architect decided to immortalize the date of completion of all work related to the raising and installation of the Tsar Bell on a white stone octagonal pedestal.