Artillery Tower and the Powder Magazine

Officially, the tower is called the Artillery Tower, but its old Astrakhan name is different: the Torture Tower. In the early seventeenth century, under the city voivode Ivan Khorostinin, who governed Astrakhan and sought confessions from the accused, judicial inquiries involving torture began to be conducted here. The first tier was turned into a stone torture chamber, and some of the gunports were bricked up. This is where the townspeople's name for the tower came from.

But it was built for guns. Its four tiers contain fifteen gunports, and stone stairways run through the thickness of the walls. The tower is solid: it has no through gates. Beside it stood the enclosed Artillery Yard, also called the Zeleynyy Yard. At that time, zele meant gunpowder. Barrels of gunpowder were kept in the cellar beneath thick stone vaults, while weapons and the remaining supplies were kept in the yard.

In the summer of sixteen seventy, this arrangement was needed for its intended purpose. The Don Cossack ataman Stepan Razin brought an army to Astrakhan and intended to take the city. Some of Astrakhan's streltsy went over to his side, and the Cossacks entered the Kremlin. Almost the entire garrison fell apart, but a small detachment locked itself inside the Torture Tower: servicemen of the Kabardian prince Kaspulat Mutsalovich and two Russian gunners. The prince himself was not here. His men were in Astrakhan on duty and now tried to hold the last stretch of wall they were defending.

A crowd stormed the tower until noon. The defenders ran out of lead, and then they began loading their guns with silver coins. The coins replaced bullets for as long as the gunpowder lasted. When that ran out as well, the men opened the tower and tried to break out of the city with edged weapons. They were caught and all killed. After that, the Cossacks occupied the tower.

None of the silver coins fired from its gunports remain here. What has survived are the stone tiers, the stairways inside the walls, and the neighboring Powder Magazine. The magazine now houses a museum exhibition about how a shot is fired—on the very yard where the tower's defenders first ran out of bullets and then of gunpowder.