ABSTRACT
Residents and foreign visitors to Moscow since 1600 cannot help but notice the bell tower stretching skyward in the Kremlin, which was the tallest structure in Moscow until 1883. If they have good enough eyesight they might make out the inscription that wraps three times around the top of the tower, some 81 metres aloft, which reads:
By the will of the Holy Trinity, [and] by order of the Great Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince Boris Fedorovich / of All Russia, Autocrat, and of his son the pious Great Sovereign, Tsarevich and Grand Prince / Fedor Borisovich, this Church was built and gilded in the second year of their reign in the year 1600. 1
