Pervaya Bezymyannaya Tower, Fortified tower in Tverskoy District, Russia.
Pervaya Bezymyannaya Tower is a blind tower on the southern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, between the Second Nameless and Taynitskaya towers. It is a four-sided red-brick structure 34.2 metres tall, with a lower block, a sloping mid-section and a square upper shaft pierced by two arched openings. A steep green pyramidal roof with a diamond pattern caps it, and a crenellated wall with white-capped merlons joins its lower left side.
The tower was built in the 1480s as part of the southern wall of the Moscow Kremlin. In 1571 a fire reached its gunpowder stores and the tower exploded, scattering bricks along the Moskva River; it was rebuilt between 1620 and 1680. In 1771 it was dismantled for Vasily Bazhenov's palace project and rebuilt in 1783 by Karl Blank at a new site closer to the Taynitskaya Tower.
The tower's name changed with its role: it was called the Powder Tower because gunpowder was stored inside. The Nameless towers stood at the edge of the lowland and so never received a descriptive name. Visitors can see the two arched openings on the upper shaft and the small dormers below, details that recall its defensive use.
The tower stands on the south wall between the Second Nameless and Taynitskaya towers, on the Kremlin embankment along the Moskva River. It has no ground-level entrance and no access to the wall walk, so it is viewed from outside, from the embankment or from Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge. The wall section beside it was moved closer to the Taynitskaya Tower in 1783.
The tower's Russian name, Bezymyannaya, means "nameless", and it was also called the Powder Tower because gunpowder stores were kept inside. A 1646 inventory recorded a crack above the doors and a quarter-sazhen (about 0.53 m) of brick knocked out in the doorway; by 1667 the doors were gone and two bricks had fallen from the vault.
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