Address: Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, between the Conception and Ivanovskaya towers
Coordinates: 56 ° 19'49.9 "N 44 ° 00'06.6" E
Content:
Brief history and description
The White Tower rises opposite the Ivanovo Congress, also known as the Kremlin Congress, and this is how the Nizhny Novgorod regional historian N.I. Khramtsovsky called it in the 1850s. The White Tower is built in the form of a round four-tier structure topped with a wooden roof.
The lower part of the outer tower facade, facing the Volga, is less than half lined with white limestone. According to one version, the tower was named "White" not because of the white stone masonry of the lower tier, but because the fortification was built on the monastery land... In the old days, land plots that belonged to churches and spiritual feudal lords were called white.
View of the tower from the walls of the Kremlin
If the "black lands" owned by the peasants were considered sovereign and taxed in favor of the king, then the white lands were exempted from paying state duties. In the 16th - 17th centuries, inside the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, next to the White Tower, there was an ancient monastery of St. Simeon the Stylite, founded in 1574 by disgraced Novgorodians.
After a terrible fire in 1715, the monastery burned down and was no longer rebuilt, but the name "Simeonovskaya" has since been assigned to the White Tower. The foundations of the Kremlin walls were deformed and displaced due to frequent landslides that fell from the steep Volga banks. In the course of numerous repairs "Belaya" surpassed all the round towers of the Kremlin in terms of the number of loopholes. The inventory of 1765 reports on the deplorable state of the White Tower: "this wall and the whole will soon collapse."
View of the tower from the territory of the Kremlin
After repairs, the archive of the Treasury was housed in the walls of the ancient building since 1831, and in 1889-1924 there was the archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Scientific Commission.
Legend of the White Tower
An interesting legend is connected with the White and Zachatskaya towers. They say that under Tsar Ivan III, 500 years ago, Danilo Volkhovets was serving his sentence in a Nizhny Novgorod prison. Working on the construction of the fortress walls, Danilo showed himself as a talented architect, for which he was promised freedom. On the day of the feast of the Conception of the Virgin, to which the laying of the foundations of the White and Conception towers was timed, Danilo quarreled with the overseas builder Giovanni Tatti. Giovanni tried to kiss Danila's bride, Nastasya Gorozhanka. A fight broke out between the masters, and they both died. Over the grave of Danila, his comrades erected the White Tower, collecting all the white limestone from the Volga banks.
Giovanni was buried 150 meters from Belaya, erected over the place of his burial the Zachata tower made of red brick. Nastasya bitterly mourned her fiancé, and after centuries Mother Volga seemed to hear the girl's prayers. Groundwater, undermining the soil, caused a landslide, which destroyed the Conception Tower. And the White Tower withstood the onslaught of the elements and to this day stands as a monument over the place where master Danila is buried.
