Tsar Cannon

The Tsar Cannon (Tsar Pushka) is an ornate bronze cannon cast in 1586 by Andrei Chokhov during the reign of Fyodor I, the last Rurikid tsar of Russia.  It was designed as a bombard, a short, fat, large-caliber gun meant to fire stone balls at enemy fortifications.  More decorative than practical, the Tsar Cannon was fired at least once, but was never used in combat.  The cannon, whose caliber 35 inches, weighs almost 40 tons including the metal carriage.  It was originally mounted on Red Square near the Place of Skulls, where it would have served as an easily visible symbol of Russian military power to anyone approaching the Kremlin.  By 1706, the Tsar Cannon was moved behind the walls to the Kremlin Arsenal.  It was placed on Ivan Square in 1860, and has remained there to this day, along with four iron cannonballs forged in Saint Petersburg.  As a joke, the cannonballs are the wrong size for the gun.