Towers to visit Russia

The Savior's Tower (Spasskaya), the highest tower in the compound and directly overlooking Red Square, is the main tower of the Kremlin. It enjoys a sacred aura and the rule imposed to uncover the head to be able to cross this entrance of apparat used by the tsars and the dignitaries. During the 70 years of communism, the tower's carillon played the Internationale and the Funeral March twice a day. Today, the tower is famous for its clock: the gag is to ask the time on the Red Square when you just have to raise your head.

The Ivan the Great bell tower is hard to ignore. It is enthroned, royal, in the middle of the Kremlin. Following the Italian tradition of its architects, it is a campanile, detached from the church on which it depends. At 81 m high, it was for a long time the highest point of the capital, as the tsars forbade building any higher. This makes it an ideal panoramic point to see the old city from above. The ground floor has been converted into an exhibition hall. Among its bells, the Assumption bell (64 t) has rung three times for centuries to announce the death of a tsar.

Troitskaya Tower is the tallest of its sisters, rising 80 meters above the ground. Its name is inherited from the fact that it once overlooked a suburb of the capital that surrounded the monastery of the Trinity-St. Sergius. The tower itself is built on eight levels, two of which are in the basement, once used as a prison, topped by a ruby-coloured star: a lost symbol of the Soviet era. Its door led to the Patriarch's palace and was the entrance used by the tsars.