GREAT BELL OF MOSCOW

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 64, 17 April 1946, Page 6

GREAT BELL OF MOSCOW

WEIGHS 20© TONS BUT HAS NEVER SPOKEN In Moscow, the capital of Russia, stands the lai’gest bell in the world. This huge bell, so large as to defy the imagination of anyone who has not seen it, weighs approximately 200 tons! And yet this immense instrument has stood silent for over 200 years. It is truly the Bell Without a Voice.

There is an interesting story about Russia’s great, silenf bell, and the reason why it lost its voice before it had ever spoken. In 1700, one of Moscow’s biggest and best-loved bells was destroyed by fire. The people clamoured for a new one, and the Empress Anna Ivanovna ordered a new instrument to take the place of the old one.

At that time, the bell tower in which a bell was to be hung was usually built first, then the oell cast and hauled to its tower. But the casting of this new instrument was to be such an undertaking that the Empress ordered it made upon the spot where it was to be hung. During the casting of the bell, people from all over Russia came to view the spectacle and to cast their precious jewels and gold or silver jewellery into the white-hot metal. Finally, in the year 1737, the monster bell was cast and everyone eagerly awaited its cooling that they might hear its mighty voice. But a terible thing happened. A great fire swept over Moscow, destroying most of the city. It roared over the casting pit, setting afire the big wooden

rafters of the tower that was being built above the new bell. Down they crashed, and the excited townspeople, eager to put out the flames, poured water upon them. Unfortunately some of the water fell upon the bell which had not yet cooled. The huge instrument cracked and a great piece of metal fell out of its side. The Great Bell of Moscow was made voiceless before it had ever spoken! The ruined masterpiece, for nearly a hundred years, lay where it had fallen. Not even the eleven-ton piece which had fallen from it was put in place. Then, in 1836, a marble platform was prepared for it and several hundred soldiers, using twenty

capstans, lifted the bell upon the pedestal. There it remains to this day, revered by the people of Russia who love it, even though it cannot speak to them. No other bell on earth is even comparably near the size of the Great Bell of Moscow. It is twenty feet seven inches in height, has a diameter of twenty-two feet, eight inches, a circumference of approximately seventy feet, and is two feet in thickness. Forty people can stand at one time within this two hundred ton metal shell, and it has often been used as a chapel.

The outside surface of the bell is covered with examples of the Russian art of the time. On the sides are cast full size portraits of Tsar Alexis Michaelovitch and Empress Anna Ivanovna. Figures representing Jesus and Mary, His mother, appear on the upper part of the bell. Much of the rest of the surface is covered with highly decorated copies of the Psalms.

On the very top of the bell is a great ball, topped by a bronze cross several feet high. The total height of the bell, including the cross, is thirty-four feet.