Sukharev tower — an outstanding monument of Russian civil architecture, standing 1695 1934 in Moscow at the intersection of the Garden ring and Sretenka of the 1st Meschanskaya street.

Sukharev tower was built in 1692-1695 years on old wooden Sretensky gate of Zemlyanoy Gorod.
The tower was built at the initiative of Peter I according to the project M. I. Choglokov. The name was in honor of Lawrence Sukharev whose regiment of Streltsy in the end of XVII century was guarded by Sretensky gates. In 1689 Peter I fled from his sister the Princess Sophia in St. Sergius ' Laura of the Sukharev regiment was at the defense of Peter. In gratitude the king ordered to build on the site of the old gate a new stone clock.

In the years 1698-1701 gate was rebuilt in the form in which they reached the beginning of the XX century, with high, crowned with a canopy tower in the center, resembling a Western European city hall.

Sukharev tower was one of the main attractions of Moscow.

"She was beautiful, fabulous, pink, and transitions, seen from the square, could walk puss in boots," wrote about the tower Yuri Olesha. Despite the protests of many well-known architects and historians, the Sukharev tower was demolished in 1934 in connection with the reconstruction of the area. In making this decision was directly involved Stalin.

The day before the entry of Napoleon's troops into Moscow, the hawk, with fetters on his legs, tangled in the wings of the two-headed copper eagle on the spire of the Sukharev tower. The bird fluttered long, and not yet died. The people watching this, interpreted: "That is so evident and Bonaparte became entangled in the wings of the Russian eagle."

Many legends were associated with the Sukharev tower. One of them was the result of the parsing of the tower. Moscow legend has it that Stalin had decided to destroy the Sukharev tower to find some treasure. So the tower was very carefully dismantled, brick by brick.

Stalin claimed that "the Soviet people will be able to create a more majestic and memorable examples of architectural creativity than the Sukharev tower."

"Terrible! Purple, red,
The sun's setting beam lit
In a pile of rubble turned into living,
Still I see her yesterday —
The proud beauty, the pink tower..."

The tower in 1982 even made the decision to recover, but the competition none have been adopted. Trams from Sretenka, too, soon disappeared, they were replaced by trolleybuses. Now here are meaningless in a cultural sense and ruthless 16-lane Garden ring.
When disassembling the Sukharev tower, one of the architraves of the Windows on the third floor was preserved and moved to the Donskoy monastery where it was built into the monastery wall. Watch with the Sukharev tower is now installed on the tower of the Front gate of the estate Kolomenskoe. The foundations of the tower have also been preserved, but hidden under a modern square.

Now about the existence of the Sukharev tower reminds us of a memorial sign in the square on the Garden Ring.