The Kolomna Kremlin

The second most important gates of the Kolomna Kremlin were Ivanovskie ones – 35 meters high, 21 meters long and 15 meters wide. The gates were dissembled in the beginning of XIX century.

The Kosye gates also did not remain to this day. They were called Kosye, most likely, because of their layout: arched passways of the gates were in adjacent sides of the tower. Obviously, since then the place where they once stood also received their name – Kosaya Mountain.

There were also so-called Vodyanye gates in the Kremlin. They were located on the Moskva River’s banks and were once situated in Sviblovskaya tower, but later – in a curtain wall.

Mikhailovskie gates were located in the curtain wall between the Granovitaya and Kolomenskaya (Marinkina) towers. In the end of XVI century, they were filled in, but this filling after a while crumbled. And now, after restoration, we can once again see the Mikhailovskye gates – 6 meters high and 3 meters wide.

About Melnicnye (Georgievkie) Gates we can read in the tower book-keepers records of 1669-1670, “These gates are filled in with stone and there is no passage through.”

The walls and towers of the Kolomna Kremlin throughout their centuries’ long history have participated in and witnessed many events of Ryazan Princedom, Moscow Princedom, Russian Empire, Soviet Union and Russian Federation, and, of course, have accumulated many legends.

One chronicle states that in 1525, “Grand Prince Vasily Ivanovich ordered Kolomna city to be built of stone,” and in a short note under 1531 the chronicler wrote, “That same year Kolomna city was made of stone.”

According to one of the versions, in 1611, in the Marinkina tower in the Kolomna Kremlin famous troublemaker Marina Mniszech was confined and later died. But there is a legend in the city that Marina did not die in the confinement within the Kolomna Kremlin’s walls but turned into a magpie and flew out of the window.

Yet another legend has it, that Marina Mniszech together with her husband, Cossack’s commander Zarutsky, buried a treasure in Kolomna district under the Pyatnitskie gates’ door, but nobody knows where.

There is another legend saying that the Marinkina tower received its name in honor of Marinka – a Kolomna nun, who was by a special diocesan investigation found out to be an active lesbian. She was isolated and walled into the fortress wall, lest she would lead her co-sisters into temptation.

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