Tsar Bell

This guide to the Tsar Bell in the Moscow Kremlin returns to 1735, when Empress Anna commissioned the largest bell ever cast, a job a renowned French bellmaker had already turned down as impossible. It follows the father-and-son founders Ivan and Mikhail Motorin through the casting, up to May 1737, when the finished bell still sat in its ten-meter casting pit, wrapped in wooden scaffolding, as a fire began spreading toward it. Ivan Motorin died partway through the original casting, and his son Mikhail finished the job.