Ini­tial­ly, the famous Spasskaya Tow­er was called Frol­ovskaya, since it was locat­ed near the Church of Frol and Lau­rus. In 1516, a wood­en bridge was thrown from the tow­er across the moat. Only in 1658, by decree of Tsar Alex­ei Mikhailovich, the tow­er began to be called Spasskaya. The new name was asso­ci­at­ed with the icon of the Sav­ior Not Made by Hands, which was locat­ed above the gate on the Red Square side. Dur­ing con­struc­tion, the tow­er was twice as low. Now its height togeth­er with the star is 71 meters. This is due to the mod­ern­iza­tion and addi­tions that were car­ried out peri­od­i­cal­ly through­out the tow­er’s life. Thus, in 1624–1625, the Eng­lish archi­tect Christo­pher Galovey, with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Russ­ian mas­ter Bazhen Ogurtsov, erect­ed a mul­ti-tiered top in the Goth­ic style over the tow­er.

The Spassky Gate was con­sid­ered holy. There­fore, it was for­bid­den to ride through them on horse­back, and men who passed through these gates had to remove their head­dress­es in front of the image of the Sav­ior, illu­mi­nat­ed by a lamp. Those who did not obey this rule had to make 50 pros­tra­tions. Crim­i­nals sen­tenced to death who were exe­cut­ed at Lob­noye Mesto prayed to the image of the Sav­ior of Smolen­sk. There is a leg­end asso­ci­at­ed with the icon of the Sav­ior Not Made by Hands. In the mid­dle of the 17th cen­tu­ry, a plague epi­dem­ic swept through the cen­tral provinces. She bypassed the city of Khly­nov and rumors spread that the rea­son was the mirac­u­lous image of the Sav­ior Not Made by Hands, to whom the towns­peo­ple prayed. After Tsar Alex­ei Mikhailovich found out about this, he ordered the icon to be deliv­ered to Moscow. The image was deliv­ered in a reli­gious pro­ces­sion in 1648. After the Bol­she­viks came to pow­er, the gate image and the icon of the Sav­ior Not Made by Hands were lost. How­ev­er, in June 2010, icon painter Dmit­ry Vinokurov wrote an accu­rate list of the famous mirac­u­lous icon.

Accord­ing to leg­end, when Napoleon was pass­ing through the Spassky Gate in cap­tured Moscow, a gust of wind pulled the famous cocked hat from his head. Dur­ing the retreat of the French army from Moscow, the Spasskaya Tow­er was ordered to be blown up, but the Don Cos­sacks arrived in time and extin­guished the already lit wicks. To the left of the gate stood the chapel of the Great Coun­cil Rev­e­la­tion (Smolen­skaya), to the right — the Great Coun­cil Angel (Spasskaya). They were demol­ished in 1925.

Ini­tial­ly, there was an Eng­lish clock on the Spasskaya Tow­er. They were made in 1625 under the direc­tion of the Eng­lish mechan­ic Christo­pher Galovey. But in 1705, by order of Peter I, the clock was remade in accor­dance with Ger­man tra­di­tions — with a dial at 12 o’clock. In 1770, the Eng­lish clock was rein­stalled and found in the Cham­ber of Facets. Since 1770, the clock has played the Ger­man melody “Ah, my dear Augus­tine” for some time. Mod­ern chimes were made by broth­ers Niko­lai and Ivan Budenop in 1851–1852 and installed on the 8–10 tiers of the Spasskaya Tow­er. From that time on, the chimes played the “March of the Pre­o­brazhen­sky Reg­i­ment” at noon and 6:00, and at 3:00 and 9:00 the hymn “How Glo­ri­ous is Our Lord in Zion” by Dmit­ry Bort­nyan­sky, which sound­ed over Red Square until 1917. Mod­ern clocks weigh 25 tons and are dri­ven by three weights weigh­ing from 160 to 224 kg. The watch has four dials with a diam­e­ter of 6.12 m, the height of the num­bers is 72 cm, the length of the hour hand is 2.97 m, the minute hand is 3.28 m. They are wound twice a day.