We ascend the hill and stand upon a wide paved plateau, or esplanade, with a scene immediately around, before, and below us, of interest, grandeur, beauty, and novelty. A cloudless sky and a blazing sun are over us. All the buildings are dazzling in whiteness, and the domes of thirty-two churches within the Kremlin, and hundreds below and around, are blazing at noon-tide in their gold and green. Each one of three hundred and seventy churches has several domes, and besides them there are theatres and palaces, and convents and other public buildings, roofs painted green, sides white, and gilt overlaying domes, turrets, and spires. Gardens filled with trees, among the dwellings, as in more Oriental cities, and the river circling its way into and out of the town, give us some idea of what Babylon or Nineveh might have been in their vast enclosure and picturesque rural attractions within their massive walls. In the midst of the Kremlin, and above every other structure in Moscow, rises toward the sky the white, solid, simple Tower of IVAN; majestic in its simplicity and height, as if it were the axis about which this fairy world of Moscow was revolving, it stands sublimely there, with a bell of 444,000 pounds at its foot, and another of 130,000 swinging in its crown. [Illustration: PLAN OF THE CENTRE OF MOSKVA CITY. _Scale of Feet._] _A._ THE KREMLIN. 1. _Uspenski Sobore, or Cathedral._ 2. _Archangelskoi Sobore._ 3. _Annunciation Church._ 4. _Spass na Boru Church._ 5. _Birth of the Virgin Church._ 6. _Granovitaya Palata._ 7. _Court Church._ 8. _Uair the Martyr Church._ 9. _Constantine and Helen Church._ 10. _Ivanovskaya Kolokolnya._ 11. _Twelve Apostles Church._ 12. _Holy Synod Office._ 13. _Chudor Monastery._ 14. _Voznesenskoi Nunnery._ 15. _Our Saviour’s Gate._ 16. _St. Nicholas’ Gate._ 17. _Trinity Gate._ 18. _Borovitskiya Gate._ 19. _The Secret Gates._ _B._ THE KITAI GOROD. 1. _Pokrovskoi Sobore._ 2. _Kazanskoi Sobore._ 3. _Iverskaya Chapel._ 4-25. _Churches and Monasteries; amongst which No 7 is the Church of the Mother of God of Vladimir; and No. 15, the Church of the Mother of God of Georgia._ 26. _Varvarskiya Gate._ 27. _Ilyinskiya Gate._ 28. _Nikolskiya Gate._ 29. _Voskresenskoi Gate._ 30. _Monument of Minim and Pojarskii._ At the foot of the Ivan Tower, supported by a pedestal of stone, is the largest bell in the world, and probably the largest that ever _was_ in the world. A piece is broken out of its side, and the fragment is lying near. The breadth of the bell is so great,—it is twenty feet across,—that the cavity underneath has been used as a chapel, where as many people can stand as in a circle sixty feet around.