Tsar Cannon
large artillery piece from 1586
The Tsar Cannon (Russian: Царь-пушка, Tsar'-pushka) is a large early modern period artillery piece (known as a bombarda in Russian) on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin. 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. However, the cannon bears traces of at least one firing. Per the Guinness Book of Records it is the largest bombard by caliber in the world, and it is a major tourist attraction in the ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin.
Description
The Tsar Cannon is located just past the Kremlin Armory, facing towards the Kremlin Senate. It is made of bronze, weighs 39,312 kilograms (86,668 lb) and has a length of 5.34 m (17.5 ft). Its bronze-cast barrel has an internal diameter of 890 mm (35.0 in), and an external diameter of 1,200 mm (47.2 in). The barrel has eight cast rectangular brackets for use in transporting the gun, which is mounted on a stylized cast iron gun carriage with three wheels.
The barrel is decorated with relief images, including an equestrian image of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, with a crown and a scepter in his hand on horseback.
“Tsar Cannon” enters the record as large artillery piece from 1586. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tsar, Cannon and large can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tsar Cannon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.