Tsar Cannon

Lay your palm against the barrel if you can reach it. The bronze is cool and smooth in some places and rough in others, and it carries a dull green-brown tone that only centuries of weather can give. Around you, the Kremlin is quiet in a particular way. You hear footsteps on paving stones, a guide's voice somewhere behind the trees, perhaps the hum of a distant bell. In front of you sits a gun so large that it seems to belong to giants rather than to soldiers.

This is the Tsar Cannon. It stands near the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, a short walk from the cracked Tsar Bell. Together these two objects form a kind of pair in the Kremlin. One is a bell that never rang. The other is a cannon that, for a long time, people believed had never fired. Both show the same ambition. They were made to be the largest of their kind, and to show the world what Moscow could build.

The cannon was cast in bronze in 1586. Its maker was Andrey Chokhov, a master founder who worked at the Cannon Yard in Moscow. This was the city's great foundry for guns and bells, on the bank of the Neglinnaya River. Chokhov had a long career there. He made many guns and bells, and he trained other craftsmen. But this piece is the one that carries his name into the modern age. His name is cast into the bronze itself.

The gun was made in the reign of Tsar Fyodor the First, the son of Ivan the Terrible. Walk along the right side of the barrel and look closely. You will find a relief of a rider on horseback, wearing a crown and holding a sceptre. This is Fyodor himself. It is an unusual image for a weapon. The gun does not only carry fire and stone. It also carries the portrait of a ruler, cast large and permanent, for every visitor to see.

Now consider the size. The barrel weighs roughly forty tonnes. It is more than five metres long. The mouth of the bore is close to ninety centimetres across, wide enough that a child could almost crawl inside. For this reason, record books have often listed it as one of the largest-calibre guns ever made. Stand at the front and look into the opening. The darkness inside gives you a real sense of its depth.

Here is the first surprise. Look at the pile of huge iron cannonballs stacked in front of the gun. Most visitors assume these are the ammunition. They are not. The balls are decorative, and they were added much later. They are too large to be fired from this barrel. In fact, this cannon was most likely designed to fire stone shot, or a heavy spray of smaller stones at close range. That is why some historians prefer to call it a bombard, a short, wide-mouthed early gun, rather than a true cannon.

The second surprise is the carriage under the barrel. With its great wheels and its lion's head at the front, it looks as if it belongs to the gun from the start. But it does not. The ornamental carriage, the wheels and the cannonballs were cast in iron in the 1830s, in Saint Petersburg. They were made for display, not for battle. The carriage could never have carried the gun into a war. If someone had fired the cannon from it, the carriage would almost certainly have broken.

So was the Tsar Cannon ever fired at all? For a long time, people said no, and the gun became a popular symbol of grand projects that never quite work. But the story is more complicated. During a restoration in the late twentieth century, specialists examined the bore. According to widely reported accounts of that study, they found traces that suggest the gun was fired at least once, perhaps as a test. The question is still discussed, but the old joke may not be fair.

The cannon was not always in this spot. It was first placed to defend the approaches to the Kremlin, near Red Square, where it pointed outward over the river crossings and the market streets. Over the centuries it was moved more than once. In the nineteenth century, it was given its present role. It became a monument rather than a weapon, set on its new carriage, and placed here among the cathedrals and palaces of the inner Kremlin.

Take a moment to look at the decoration on the barrel. Bands of raised ornament run around it, with leaves and curling patterns. There are inscriptions in old Russian lettering. Near the back, you may see the lifting brackets that workers once used to move this enormous weight. Every part of the surface was shaped in a clay mould before the bronze was poured. Imagine the heat of the furnace and the crowd of men watching as the molten metal ran into the ground.

Now look at the lion's head on the front of the carriage. Its mouth is open and its mane falls in thick curls. Then walk around to the sides. The wheels are covered with raised ornament, more detailed than most people expect. These are some of the finest pieces of iron casting in Moscow. Many visitors photograph the barrel and leave. It is worth slowing down here, because the nineteenth-century additions have their own story about how Russia saw its past.

From this place, turn slowly and notice what surrounds you. The tall white bell tower rises behind you. The golden domes of the cathedrals catch the light over the treetops. The cannon was made for a fortress city, at a time when Moscow feared attack from many directions. Today it sits among churches, lawns and quiet groups of visitors. The weapon has become something else, a reminder of a city that wanted to be seen as powerful.

Before you move on, look one more time into the dark mouth of the barrel. Then look at the face of the tsar on horseback, worn smooth by four centuries of weather and curious hands. As you walk toward the Tsar Bell, listen to the sound of your steps on the stones. You are walking the same ground where the founders, soldiers and tsars once stood, and the great bronze gun stays behind you, silent, as it has been for almost all of its long life.