Tsar Cannon

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• Tourist attraction
• Open 24 hoursEvery day
• Under 1 kmfrom Moscow center
• Wheelchair accessentrance
• Good for kids
• Official site
• 4.5 / 5240 reviews
• Moscow

A Weapon Like No Other

The Tsar Cannon's numbers are staggering. The bronze barrel weighs close to 40 tonnes (2,400 poods in the old Russian measurement) and stretches 5.34 metres from muzzle to breech. Its calibre — the internal diameter of the bore — is 890 mm, meaning a single stone ball fired from it would have weighed around 819 kg. By comparison, only a handful of nineteenth- and twentieth-century siege mortars elsewhere in the world matched or exceeded that bore width, and none of them saw combat either.↗↗↗

Despite its intimidating size, the Tsar Cannon was built with a specific defensive purpose in mind: to protect Moscow against raids by Crimean Tatar cavalry, whose devastating 1571 attack had burned much of the city. The gun was designed as a classic bombard — a wide-bore siege piece that could fire not only single stone balls but also iron grape-shot or loose stones to scatter massed infantry and horsemen. In 1591 the Tatar khan Kazı Giray approached Moscow and withdrew without attempting a siege; whether the mere existence of the Tsar Cannon played any role in that decision remains a matter for speculation.↗

Experts from the Soviet Artillery Academy who examined the cannon in 1980 found traces suggesting at least one test shot was ever fired, but the gun never saw real combat. Its decorative cast-iron carriage and the four gleaming hollow cannonballs piled beside it were not even made until 1835, at Charles Berd's foundry in St. Petersburg — they exist purely for visual grandeur.↗↗

The Master Behind the Bronze

The cannon's creator, Andrei Chokhov, earned a rare distinction: his name was cast into the barrel alongside the monarch's. Born around 1545 in the provincial town of Murom, Chokhov entered the Moscow Cannon Yard (Pushhechny Dvor) as a young apprentice and rose to become the premier foundryman of his age, eventually casting at least twenty-seven large guns over a career spanning sixty years and four reigns.↗↗

An inscription on the barrel records that the cannon was cast in the summer of 1586, in the third year of Tsar Feodor Ioannovich's reign. The same year Chokhov produced four other enormous guns — the Lion, Troilus, Aspid and Skoropeya — an exceptional output for an era when every piece had to be individually moulded and poured. Beyond cannon, he was also a celebrated bell-founder: his 1,850-pood "Godunov's Bell" for the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra and a 2,450-pood bell for the Kremlin demonstrate his mastery of the same bronze-casting art.↗

Chokhov is even credited with a breech-loading rapid-fire cannon design using a wedge-shaped mechanism that the German arms magnate Krupp later believed he had invented — until he saw Chokhov's version in a St. Petersburg museum in 1880 and tried to purchase it. The master survived the Terror of Ivan the Terrible, the upheavals of the Time of Troubles, and died in 1629 at approximately eighty-four years of age, having worked through six successive reigns.↗

A Journey Through Moscow

The Tsar Cannon has not always stood in its current spot. Shortly after it was cast, the gun was placed on Red Square near the Spassky Gate, the Kremlin's main ceremonial entrance, where it guarded the bridge over the Neglinnaya River. For more than a century it sat on a simple wooden mount filled with earth, then later on a stone rampart that housed a tavern below.↗↗

In 1701, the cannon narrowly escaped destruction. After suffering catastrophic losses of artillery to Sweden at the Battle of Narva, Peter the Great ordered all old Kremlin guns melted down for recasting into modern weapons. At the last moment he spared the Tsar Cannon for its uniqueness. It was moved into the Kremlin in 1706 and installed near the Arsenal gate. In 1843 it was transferred to the entrance of the old Armoury Chamber museum building, where it stood on new ornamental carriages cast in St. Petersburg.↗↗

The cannon's final relocation came in 1960, when the old Armoury building was demolished to make way for the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. The Tsar Cannon was moved to its present position on the west side of Ivanovskaya Square, a setting that places it within an ensemble of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century churches, the great bell tower, and the Patriarch's Chambers — making it feel like the natural guardian of the Kremlin's oldest sacred heart. A thorough renovation in the 1970s restored the barrel, carriage and decorative shot to the condition visitors see today.↗↗

The Ornament and the Legend

What elevates the Tsar Cannon from a piece of military hardware to a work of fine art is its surface decoration. The bronze is covered with elaborate cast friezes of scrolling vegetation, commemorative inscriptions in Old Russian, and — at the centre of the barrel's widest band — a remarkable equestrian portrait of Tsar Feodor Ioannovich enthroned on horseback. Feodor, the pious and gentle son of Ivan the Terrible, was not known for martial prowess, which adds an irony to his image adorning what is ostensibly a weapon of war. His brother-in-law and de facto regent Boris Godunov was the true instigator of the cannon project, using it as a statement of Moscow's power and prestige.↗↗↗

For Russians, the Tsar Cannon has long existed in a kind of double light: a point of immense national pride in Chokhov's genius and the scale of his achievement, yet also a humorous symbol of impractical grandeur. The poet Alexander Roslavlev joked in 1909 that Russia had produced its third "savage toy" after the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Cannon — an epic statue of Alexander III. That tension between monumental ambition and pragmatic purpose is part of what makes the sight so fascinating.↗

Visiting the Tsar Cannon

The Tsar Cannon stands outdoors on Ivanovskaya Square and is included with a standard Moscow Kremlin ticket, so no separate admission is required. It sits in an open area where you can walk close enough to examine the barrel's ornamental detail, peer into the 890 mm bore, and appreciate the sheer bulk of the cast-iron cannonballs piled at its base. Its location between the Ivan the Great Bell Tower and the Twelve Apostles' Church means you will likely pass it during a general Kremlin tour; give yourself ten to fifteen minutes to absorb the details before moving on.↗↗

The Kremlin museum grounds are open daily from 9:30 to 18:00 (ticket office closes at 17:00), with Thursdays as the day off. The Ivanovskaya Square area is wheelchair accessible and the cannon is considered a good sight for children, who tend to be delighted by its enormous scale. Photography is unrestricted in this outdoor section. A useful tip: visit early in the morning or later in the afternoon to avoid the largest coach-tour crowds that can gather around the gun — the open square offers multiple angles and the surrounding architecture provides a wonderful backdrop for photographs at almost any point of the day.↗↗

In the Shadow of the Bell Tower

The broader context of the Tsar Cannon's setting is almost as impressive as the gun itself. Ivanovskaya Square, named after the ascension of Ivan the Great, is effectively the Kremlin's oldest public gathering space. The towering white bell spire above you, the terracotta-and-white facade of the Patriarch's Palace to the north, and the domed churches ringing the square all date from the period when the cannon was cast. Standing before the Tsar Cannon, you are in the very heart of late-medieval Moscow — the same ground where tsars were proclaimed, patriarchs processed, and the city's fate was decided. The cannon is one of the most striking ways to make that layered history feel immediate and tangible.↗