0671, 3235 RUSSIA (Moscow) - The towers of Moscow Kremlin - part of Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow (UNESCO WHS)

0671 Spasskaya Tower

Posted on 07.06.2013, 06.01.2018
The Spasskaya Tower is the main tower with a through-passage on the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, which overlooks the Red Square. It was built in 1491 under the supervision of the architect Pietro Antonio Solari (Pyotr Fryazin), and was initial named Frolovskaya, later being renamed the Spasskaya (Savior's), in honor of the Icon of the Savoir Not Made by Hands, which crowned the gateway. Originally it had half of its present height (71m with the star mounted in 1935), in 1624-1625 being built a multi-tiered top with a stone tent roof.

3235 Towers Konstantino-Eleninskaya,
Nabatnaya and Spasskaya

 

It was the first one to be crowned with the hipped roof in 1624-1625 by architects Bazhen Ogurtsov and Christopher Galloway (a Scottish architect and clockmaker). The first clock was mounted in 1491, and the present Kremlin chimes were installed in 1851-1852 by the Butenop brothers. The tower gate was once the main entrance into the Kremlin. In tsarist times, anyone passing through the gates had to remove their headgear and dismount their horses. This tradition was broken in the Soviet era. In 1935, the Soviet government installed a red star instead of a two-headed eagle on top of the tower.

3043 RUSSIA (Moscow) - Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow (UNESCO WHS)

3043 Moscow Kremlin seen from the Moscow River

Inextricably linked to all the most important historical and political events in Russia since the 13th century, the Kremlin (built between the 14th and 17th centuries by outstanding Russian and foreign architects) was the place where the Russian state was formed, where the issue of succession to the throne was decided, in medieval times, where the Boyar Duma held its sessions, where the Church held its councils and where were crowned the tsars, even when the capital had been shifted to St. Petersburg.

3038 RUSSIA (Moscow) - Tsar Cannon - part of Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow (UNESCO WHS)

The Tsar Cannon is a large medieval artillery piece on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin, just past the Kremlin Armory. It is a monument of Russian artillery casting art, cast in bronze in 1586 in Moscow, by the Russian master bronze caster Andrey Chokhov. Mostly of symbolic impact, it was never used in a war. Per the Guinness Book of Records it is the largest bombard by caliber in the world. The very low ratio of the length of its barrel to its caliber makes it technically not a cannon, but a stylized mortar.

2947 RUSSIA (Moscow) - The Palace of Kuskovo

Kuskovo was the summer country house and estate of the Sheremetev family, one of the wealthiest and most influential noble families of Russia. Built in the mid-18th century, it was originally situated several miles to the east of Moscow but now is part of the East District of the city. It was one of the first great summer country estates of the Russian nobility, and one of the few near Moscow still preserved. Today the estate is the home of the Russian State Museum of Ceramics, and the park is a favourite place of recreation for Muscovites.

2389 RUSSIA (Moscow) - Moscow Metro

2389 Moscow Metro - Taganskaya station (Koltsevaya Line)

Opened in 1935 with one 11km line and 13 stations, the Moscow Metro was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union. As of 2016, it has 200 stations and its route length is 333.3km, serving Moscow and the neighbouring towns of Krasnogorsk, Reutov and Kotelniki. It is organized in a spoke-hub distribution paradigm, with the majority of rail lines running radially from the centre of Moscow, mostly underground.

1652 RUSSIA (Moscow) - International Military Tattoo “Spasskaya Tower” 2014

A tattoo is a military performance of music or display of armed forces in general. The term comes from the early 17th century Dutch phrase doe den tap toe ("turn off the tap"), a signal sounded by drummers or trumpeters to instruct innkeepers near military garrisons to stop serving beer and for soldiers to return to their barracks. The tattoo was originally a form of military music, but the practice has evolved into more elaborate shows involving theatrics and musical performances. Russia have recently started annual "Spasskaya Bashnya" International Military Tattoo in Moscow. Its Russian name came from the name of the location where it is performed (the Red Square's Saviour Tower).

0672 RUSSIA (Moscow) - Red Square - part of Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow (UNESCO WHS)

0672 Red Square, with Saint Basil's Cathedral and Spasskaya tower

Often considered the central square of Moscow, Red Square separates the Kremlin from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod. The name neither originates from the pigment of the surrounding bricks nor from the link between the colour red and communism. Rather, the name came about because the Russian word krasnaya, which means both "red" and "beautiful," was applied to a small area between St. Basil's Cathedral, the Spasskaya tower of the Kremlin, and the herald's platform called Lobnoe Mesto, and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich officially extended the name to the entire square.

0128, 0462 RUSSIA (Moscow) - Saint Basil's Cathedral - part of Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow (UNESCO WHS)

0128 Saint Basil's Cathedral in nowadays

Posted on 20.02.2012, 12.01.2013
Followed the example of Vasili III, his father, Ivan IV, the first Tsar of Russia, known to posterity as Ivan the Terrible, has built several churches with oriental features after the conquest of Kazan (1552), most famously being Saint Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow (in the pictures). Erected between 1555 and 1561, the Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat marks the geometric centre of the city and the hub of its growth since the 14th century. It was the tallest building in Moscow until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

0462 Saint Basil's Cathedral in 1890

The original building, known as Trinity Church, contained 8 side churches arranged around the 9th, central church of Intercession; the 10th church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Basil Fool for Christ. After every victory of the Russo-Kazan War, Ivan IV erected a wooden church next to the walls of Trinity Church, so at the end of his Astrakhan campaign it was shrouded within a cluster of 7 churches. In 1554 he ordered also the construction of the Church of Intercession on the same site, and one year later began the construction of a new stone cathedral on the site.

0200 RUSSIA (Moscow) – "With greetings from the past"

This is the first Soviet postcard received by me. Yes, Soviet, because it was issued in 1981, so with a year before Brezhnev's death. I have a lot of postcards from that period (uncirculated, purchased recently from the flea market in Ploiesti, some of them very beautiful, that I will provide for swap), but I not received any. Many thanks, Egor, for this premiere.

On the back is wrote "USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements Industry Square". Named in nowadays All-Russia Exhibition Centre, it’s a permanent general-purpose trade show in Moscow which was established in 1935 as the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (VSKhV), renamed in 1959 Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy.

So in 1935 an existing site (then known as Ostankino Park) was approved for the exhibition, and in the next year was approved the master plan by Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky, but the first show began barely in 1939, after several delays. Meanwhile the architect was arrested, because the exhibition didn’t suit with "the ideological direction of the moment", and was "too modest and too temporary". After WWII delays continued, the complex being reopened only in 1954. Until 1989 the exhibition had 82 pavilions with the exhibition area of 700,000 m2. Each pavilion was dedicated to a particular field: the Engineering Pavilion (1954), the Space Pavilion (1966), the Atomic Energy Pavilion (1954), the People's Education Pavilion (1954), the Radioelectronics Pavilion (1958), the Soviet Culture Pavilion (1964). In image is, of course, the Space Pavilion.

The aircraft is a Yak-42 (NATO reporting name Clobber), CCCP-42304, a three-engined mid-range passenger jet, a new model at that time, a T-tail with both the vertical fin and the horizontal surfaces swept. It performed the first flight in 1975, was introduced in 1980, and was built between 1980 and 2003 in 178 copies. It was the first airliner produced in the Soviet Union to be powered by modern high-bypass turbofan engines. Two engines were mounted in pods on either side of the rear fuselage, with the third embedded inside the rear fuselage.

Above it's mounted a Soyuz (Union) rocket, a expendable launch systems developed by OKB-1, and manufactured by TsSKB-Progress in Samara, Russia. The Soyuz vehicles, used as the launcher for the manned Soyuz spacecraft as part of the Soyuz program, is the most used and reliable launch vehicle in the history of spaceflight. By the dawn of the 21st century, more than 1,600 Soyuz rockets of various kinds had been launched with an unparalled success rate of 97.5% for production models. It can lift up to 7,500 kg into low Earth orbit and has been used to launch a wide variety of scientific and military satellites.

Both aircraft and rocket are even now in the exhibition, but not in the same position, the rocket being placed vertically, next to the aircraft.

The stamp depict Ryazan Kremlin (25R) and is part of the series Russian Kremlins, about which I wrote here.


sender: Egor Ivanov / Egorivanov (postcrossing)
sent from Moskow (Russia), on 07.04.2012
photo: V. Davydova

0088 RUSSIA (Moscow) - Ensemble of the Novodevichy Convent (UNESCO WHS)

So important was Smolensk, that in 1524, to the 10th anniversary of its conquest, the Grand Prince of Moskow Vasili III had built the Novodevichy Convent (also known as Bogoroditse-Smolensky Monastery), and dedicated it to the Icon of the Mother God of Smolensk Hodegetria, the highest shrine of Russian orthodoxy. Ivan the Terrible, the first tsar of All Russia, later granted a number of other villages to the convent. Located in the south-western part of the historic town of Moscow, at a curve of the Moskow River, the convent is enclosed within a high masonry wall with 12 towers, and was an important part of the southern defensive belt of the russian capital. It was called Novodevichy (The Virgin Hodigitria New Maiden) to differ from the Ascension Convent, Voznesensky Starodevichy (Old Maiden), located in the Moscow Kremlin.