The Tsar Bell, also known as the Tsarsky Kolokol, Tsar Kolokol III, or Royal Bell, is on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin. The Tsar Bell is one of the most prominent and famous monuments of the art foundry in Russia. It's the biggest bell in the world. It weighs about 200 tonnes, but no one has ever heard its ringing.
The bell was broken during a big fire, and it was never lifted into a bell tower. The diameter is 6.6 metres, and the height is 6.14 metres. It was cast from bronze by masters Ivan Motorin and his son Mikhail in 1733–1735. Ornaments, portraits, and inscriptions were made by V. Kobelev, P. Galkin, P. Kokhtev, P. Serebryakov, and P. Lukovnikov. The bell was never rung, even during a fire in 1737. After the fire, the bell remained in its casting for a century. In 1836, the Tsar's bell was placed on a stone pedestal next to the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in the Moscow Kremlin. The slab is nearly three times larger than the world's largest bell hung for full-circle ringing, the tenor bell at Liverpool Cathedral.
However, recent studies have questioned the fact that the bell is made of plastic bronze and could split during a fire and suggest that cracks have arisen because of violations in technology (the cooling after casting the bell could be left on the rod and cracked out for crimping), and the fire could be a convenient excuse.
This version says that in 1736 MOTORIN receives the casting of the Tsar Bell for just 1,000 rubles and ranks the Tsehmeystera casting Affairs "for their efforts and for updates to the bell plant", which suffered from a fire. Later, MOTORIN asks for 8,000 rubles for the bell he casts for the Novodevichy Convent and the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.
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After 1737, there were several attempts to retrieve the bell from the pit, but they all ended in failure. Only in 1836 did the architect Auguste Montferrand from France manage to accomplish this task. He drafted a lift and stone pedestal to install a bell on it. As a result of this work of art, a foundry sample was taken out of the pit and set on an octagonal pedestal.
E. Gilbertson. Tsar Bell. 1838. Image credit: artistclon
The bell can see the images of saints, portraits of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Empress Anna Ivanovna, as well as many inscriptions relating to the history of the bell.
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Tsar Bell, XIX century. Photo by Scherer Nabgolts and co.
Image credit: David Hill
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