Below are some other images of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. Actually, the Tower derived its name not from Ivan III, but from the name of the earlier church tower, honoring St. John Climacus (525-605), which stood on the site. Ivan III did order the construction of the new tower, which took from 1505 to 1508. In 1600 on the orders of Boris Godunov, an addition was added so that the Tower reached a final height of over 260 feet; by far the tallest building in Moscow for a long time. Napoleon, nice guy that he was, tried to blow up the Tower before he retreated from Moscow in 1812, but although the explosion leveled the adjoining buildings, the Bell Tower survived with only a small crack.
