Fioravanti, Banned from Traveling and Other Adventures of Italians in Russia
Italians in Russia built cathedrals, collected tribute on the Pechora River, and sang at the court of Peter the Great. Aristotle Fioravanti, the creator of the Assumption Cathedral, was never able to return to Bologna.
Author: Andrey Filimonov
Lord of the Towers
On October 26, 1479, the authorities of Bologna petitioned the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III, to release the engineer and architect Fioravanti, nicknamed Aristotle for his technical genius, from Moscow to his homeland. A true titan of the Renaissance, Fioravanti was skilled in practically everything—he moved bell towers from one street to another and straightened towers that had leaned due to builders' miscalculations, earning him the nickname "Maestro delle Torri" (Master of Towers). He also built bridges, dams, and locks, dug canals, and cast cannons of every caliber.
At that time, only Leonardo da Vinci had such a brilliant resume.
Despite his many talents, Fioravanti was constantly short of money. So in the spring of 1475, he decided to set out for distant, cold Moscow with his son Andrea and assistant Pietro. At 60, it was no easy task to undertake such a journey, but the terms of the grand ducal contract were very tempting: Aristotle's salary was 10 rubles a month—about two kilograms of silver.
In Moscow, the Italians were received with the highest honors. Of course! They were destined to build nothing less than the Third Rome. After marrying the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Sophia Palaiologina, Ivan III also felt a bit like a Byzantine emperor and wanted to transform his capital into the spiritual and political center of the Orthodox world.
To achieve this, he primarily needed a majestic cathedral in the center of the Kremlin. His own craftsmen were unable to cope with the task. What they built collapsed within a few years, clearly demonstrating Muscovite Rus''s technological backwardness. Now the Grand Duke sought a Western European specialist. Preferably the very best.
Historians speculate that Ivan's wife, who grew up in Italy, advised him to hire Aristotle. Her guardian was Cardinal Bessarion of Nicaea, who knew Fioravanti and praised the architect's talent after his famous relocation of the tower in Bologna.
What he accomplished then impressed even the Italians, who at the time were the finest engineers and builders in Europe. The bell tower of the Church of Santa Maria on Via Maggiore in Bologna was obstructing traffic, and city officials were planning to demolish it. Then the church authorities approached Fioravanti with a request to save the bell tower. There was only one solution: move it out of the way.
To move the 25-meter tower, a trench about five meters deep was dug and reinforced with stone and spruce logs. A wooden frame, reminiscent of a sled, was constructed at the base of the tower. Iron cylinders and wooden rollers, secured with metal hoops, were placed beneath it. The tower was pulled by several winches, powered by people and horses, and special mechanisms ensured a slow and steady movement. In four days, the bell tower was moved 13 meters and straightened at the same time.
Twenty years after this engineering feat, Aristotle Fioravanti was tasked with building the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. Ivan III demanded that the 20th-century cathedral of the same name in Vladimir serve as a model for the new church. This was intended to emphasize Moscow's continuity with the ancient Russian tradition.
Fioravanti had never encountered the Byzantine architectural style before, so he and his assistants traveled along the Golden Ring to inspect the finest examples of ancient Russian church architecture. But when he began construction of the new cathedral in the old style, he utilized the most advanced engineering technologies of the Italian Renaissance.
Despite his advanced age for the 15th century, Fioravanti was called the "young Bolognese" in Moscow, probably because he brought modernity and novelty to traditional Russian architecture.
For the construction of the Assumption Cathedral, he established a factory outside the city to stamp bricks of uniform size. Previous Moscow builders had not considered such a solution. He also used metal chains to strengthen the masonry and lightweight vaults, allowing the cathedral's five domes to rest on slender round pillars. For the first time in Moscow, lifting mechanisms similar to those used in Italy were used at the construction site. Thanks to Fioravanti's architectural solutions, the interior of the Assumption Cathedral was more spacious and bright than other Orthodox churches of the time.
In the following decades, numerous Italian architects arrived in Moscow, continuing Fioravanti's transformation of the Kremlin from a cramped fortress surrounded by a wooden posad into a royal residence with a crenellated red-brick wall and enormous gates opening onto a paved European-style square. Before Khrushchev ordered the construction of the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin, the Kremlin's architectural ensemble resembled the Castello Sforza in Milan.
In 1916, Mandelstam wrote about the five-domed Moscow cathedrals, with their Italian and Russian souls, and he highly valued these inclusions of Italy in the northern fatherland.
After a walk through "Italian Moscow," the phrase of Bulgakov's Azazello, when asked by Woland whether he likes Moscow, becomes somehow clearer. He answers: "Messire, I like Rome better!" As if, if we're going to Rome, then the first one is better than the third.
After completing the Cathedral of the Assumption, Aristotle longed to return to his homeland. He had amassed wealth and achieved a high position, but he dreamed of seeing Bologna again.
To do this, it was necessary to obtain permission to leave from the Grand Duke, who, as expected, did not want to let his outstanding specialist go.
Mario Corti, an Italian writer with a brilliant command of Russian, wrote (in Russian) two books published in Russia before the war, dedicated to Italian "specialists" in Russian service—medics and soldiers. In an interview with NeMoskva, Mario Corti shared details of his incredible adventures in Russia from the reign of Ivan III to Peter the Great:
"It's common knowledge that for the Moscow rulers, all inhabitants of Muscovy, including foreigners, were serfs, their property; they were reluctant to allow valuable foreigners in their service to return to their homeland. We know of at least one escape, involving an Italian master who managed to cross the border into Livonia. Whether he ever returned home from there remains unknown. Another master was apprehended at the border while attempting to escape and returned to Moscow."
For Ivan III, Fioravanti was valued primarily as a master cannon foundr and maker of other firearms. He is considered the creator of the cannon hut in Moscow. He was also Ivan III's chief of artillery, participating in the capture of Tver and bombarding Novgorod during the Muscovite army's final campaign in January 1478. Vasily Tatishchev, who is known to have used chronicles or fragments of chronicles that have not survived, has the following passage: "And they fired cannons incessantly, for Aristotle was very skilled," says Mario Corti.
Despite official letters sent by the Bolognese authorities in 1479 and 1482, the prince did not allow the great engineer to leave the Muscovite state.
In 1483, Aristotle attempted to leave Moscow without permission, secretly. However, he was intercepted and placed under arrest. He was soon released. Ivan III was just about to wage war on Veliky Novgorod, and he needed Fioravanti to lead the siege.
In his seventies, the "young Bolognese" was forced to continue to serve the cause of building the Third Rome, this time on the battlefield. Fioravanti built a pontoon bridge across the Volkhov River, across which Muscovite troops entered Novgorod and perpetrated the massacre.
The last documented evidence of Aristotle of Bologna dates back to the campaign against Tver in 1485. After this, his figure disappears from the historical record, giving way to legends. The most sinister of these relates that Ivan III, fearing his engineer would flee abroad again and jealous of his dealings with other rulers, ordered Fioravanti to be walled up alive within the walls of the Kremlin's Taynitskaya Tower.
It is reliably known that Aristotle's son Andreas was naturalized in Muscovy. And his grandson Fioravanti took part in Ivan IV's campaign against Kazan and died beneath its walls.
Tax officials of Dmitry Donskoy
In the summer of 2026, President Putin was shown the remains of Dmitry Donskoy in the Kremlin's Archangel Cathedral. Russian television aired a lengthy report calling this event the "discovery of the Grand Duke's relics." The report also claimed that the Battle of Kulikovo was an episode in a hybrid war waged by the "collective West" against Holy Rus'. Malicious Europeans allegedly dispatched Khan Mamai's army to march on Moscow, with Genoese mercenaries fighting alongside them.
Indeed, in the 14th century, the Genoese were highly valued throughout the world as soldiers and military specialists. They served in numerous armies, from Wallachia to Afghanistan, as long as they were paid. Incidentally, there's a theory that it was the Genoese who killed Mamai in Crimea when he tried to escape without paying them for his participation in the Battle of Kulikovo.
“Mamai… took refuge in this city under a false name (Cafe - ed.), but a merchant recognized him, and the Franks killed him,” says the Tale of the Battle of Mamai.
Of course, there could have been no "collective West" in Europe at the height of the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). It was simply a fantasy of Russian propagandists.
Dmitry Donskoy himself readily hired Genoese for work, and not only in military matters. Evidence of this is a charter he issued to a certain Andrei Fryazin. This was the name given in Muscovy, first to those from Genoa, and later to all inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula.
Dmitry Donskoy asserts Andrey's rights to the Pechora River, which at the time was a sparsely populated expanse of tundra and taiga inhabited by nomadic peoples—the Komi-Zyryans, Nenets, and Enets. The charter obliges the local residents to obey Fryazin and not interfere with his activities.
"Andrei and Matvei Fryazin were viceroys of five Grand Princes from Ivan Kalita to Dmitry Donskoy in the Russian North," explains Mario Corti. "They collected tribute and presumably harvested walrus ivory and captured gyrfalcons and falcons. Why did the Moscow Grand Princes need them? I can only say that, as is well known, in the Middle Ages, Italians occupied a dominant position in trade between West and East, had access to trade routes to the East, and controlled navigation on the Black and Mediterranean Seas. Through them, Moscow profitably sold the aforementioned goods on the Western market. The Italians, in turn, supplied luxury goods for the Moscow court, including silk and other precious fabrics, spices, weapons, "Fryazin" wines, and other goods."
Pechora's main exports were furs, walrus ivory, and birds of prey—falcons and gyrfalcons. Walrus tusks, known in ancient sources as "fish teeth," could be called "the plastic art of the Middle Ages," as they were used to make everything from buttons and dice to church statues and banquet cups. Gyrfalcons were used for hunting and were highly prized as diplomatic gifts. It is known that the Moscow ambassador Vasily Papin traveled to the Shah of Persia in the 15th century, bringing with him ninety gyrfalcons.
Dmitry Donskoy not only allowed the Italians to operate in the North but also provided them with state-owned transport. The Fryazinians had the right to state-owned carts in Perm, which was a significant expense on the long journey from Moscow to Pechora.
“One cart for the trip from Moscow to Kholmogory, the center of the Dvina region, which, we repeat, included Pechora, cost the grand ducal treasury “8 Moscow rubles” (Grekov 2015: 23), i.e. about one and a half kilograms of silver in weight equivalent,” пишет Historian Alexander Lavrentiev.
But the revenues were incomparably higher than the transportation costs, given that northern goods were shipped from Pechora not via the Baltic, where the Hanseatic League reaped a considerable share, but along the Don trade route. At the mouth of the Don, on the shores of the Sea of Azov, lay Tana, a major trading center under Venetian control. It was home not only to Venetians but also to Genoese, Florentines, and merchants from Lucca, Pisa, and Bologna. Tana connected trade routes between West and East, North and South.
Thus, northern goods could be exported via the Don and the Black Sea directly to Italy. The counter-trade flow included items needed by the Moscow princely court and its artisans. One such commodity was likely mercury, which was used in Moscow to gild church domes and seals in the princely chancery.
There is another trace of the Italian presence in Rus' under Dmitry Donskoy. In 1382, Moscow was sacked and burned by the Horde Khan Tokhtamysh. Grand Duke Dmitry avoided battle, departing for Kostroma to gather troops, and returned only after Tokhtamysh withdrew his army, leaving Moscow a ruin. In the Grand Duke's absence, the capital was defended by self-defense units under the command of the Lithuanian Prince Ostej, who died on the walls of Moscow. The chronicle also mentions the name of Adam the clothier, who, with a well-aimed crossbow shot, killed a nobleman of the Horde leading the assault. Historian Alexander Lavrentyev believes that Adam was a foreign merchant of European fabrics, likely Genoese, as indicated by his possession of a crossbow (a Genoese weapon) and other attributes.
The question of Adam's nationality from Moscow has been debated by historians for decades. In the mid-20th century, when Stalin banned the "Norman theory," all positive heroes of Russian history were ordered to be considered Russian. Therefore, for example, Academician Tikhomirov in the 1940s and 1950s argued for the Russian origin of Adam, "whom they wrongly sought to make a foreigner out of because of his somewhat unusual Russian name."
Lavrentyev objects that “Adam is not exactly an unusual name in Rus', but it is not found at all in the Russian calendar of names due to its absence from the Orthodox calendar of saints.”
The only Adam known in Russia was Count Adam Vasilyevich Olsufyev, State Secretary to Empress Catherine II. The Olsufyevs themselves explained the origin of this name in their family with anecdotes. They said Vasily Olsufyev was married to a Swedish woman named Eva. And when their first child was born, Peter the Great himself was invited to be the godfather. He arrived at the church and asked the baby's name. He was told they had named him Vasily. "No," the emperor retorted, "I don't want that name. Eva is descended from Adam; I want Adam to be descended from Eva."
And, although there was no Adam in the Orthodox calendar, the priest did not dare to object to the autocrat.
Castrate of Peter the Great
In his youth, Peter himself had an Italian specialist in an unusual profession in his service. Filippo Balatri, a native of Pisa, arrived in Moscow at the age of fifteen. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III, sent him to the Russian Tsar, who was seeking singers for the court chapel. Balatri was a castrato; as a child, he underwent surgery to preserve his angelic voice.
In Peter the Great's Rus', such a thing was unheard of. It was common practice to cut off anything a person wanted, not for the sake of art, but as a form of punishment.
Balatri was widely invited to visit. Even the foreigners living in the German Quarter had only heard of the castrati singers but had never had the opportunity to hear them sing live, as such singers were usually attached to monarchs and princes of the church.
Young Peter was proud to own such a rare toy and took his castrato everywhere, even to his rendezvous with Anna Mons. Balatri recalls their first meeting. Anna sat on a sofa with a Dutch book in her hands, surrounded by expensive furniture, and young Philippushka—as he was known in Moscow—found himself next to the favorite of the all-powerful sovereign, who was ready to indulge her every whim.
Balatri was ordered to give Anna singing lessons. According to his memoirs, during these lessons, he secretly fell in love with the mistress of the house. In Balatri's autobiography, the love affair develops into a full-blown affair, rife with jealousy and court intrigue. Allegedly, the affair with Anna even ended with the singer's arrest, when the Tsar suddenly discovered a rival at his side, seemingly completely unsuited to the role of a romantic hero.
However, all this is set out in Balatri's autobiography Frutti del Mondo (Fruits of the World), written in verse in the genre of an adventure novel, does not inspire one hundred percent confidence.
Although the singer's proximity to Anna Mons's house is confirmed by researchers of his Moscow adventures.
Another interesting episode in the castrato's life occurred in the Kalmyk steppes, when he, as part of a Russian embassy, found himself at the Khan's court and sang before him. The extraordinary Italian's voice made such an impression that the Khan offered six thoroughbred horses for the singer. The offer was politely declined, and then the steppe ruler asked the question that had been troubling him in earnest: was he speaking to a man or a woman?
Balatri writes that he was at a loss for an answer: calling himself a man wasn't quite accurate, let alone a woman, and admitting he was "gender neutral" felt awkward. Finally, he came up with a fitting response. In Tuscany, the singer explained, we have special roosters that lay eggs from which sopranos hatch. These eggs are so valuable that the richest men compete for the right to own them. It's unclear whether the Kalmyk Khan caught the play on words, but he was clearly pleased with the explanation, and the feast ended in a friendly atmosphere.
"Balatri (with the stress on the first syllable) was exceptionally important in the history of castrati. He was the first and only one to describe his own castration in detail in his memoirs in verse. It's clear why he jokingly refers to himself as a "capon" and "rooster": a capon is a castrated rooster. And the Norcini, that is, the inhabitants of the city of Norcia, were renowned throughout Italy as specialists in castrating piglets. In many cases, it was the Norcini who were invited to castrate promising boys, since human castration was prohibited, and not all doctors agreed. Furthermore, the term "Norcini" was used by analogy to describe all doctors who castrated boys," comments Mario Corti on this episode.
The castrato entertained the Russian Tsar for about four years, and in 1701 he left Russia. He had engagements in Florence, England, and France, where he sang for Louis XIV himself.
After forty years of a rich musical life, the artist's angelic voice began to fail him, and Balatri turned to the Lord and took monastic vows in the Cistercian order. He spent the rest of his life in pleasant monastic solitude, working on his memoirs.
Many educated people in Russia were captivated by Italian culture. Perhaps this was also because Italian was the language of European diplomacy in the 15th century, when Sophia (Zoe) Palaiologina arrived in Moscow to become the wife of Ivan III. She came from Italy, where she lived with her court. Naturally, after Ivan and Zoe's wedding, the grand ducal court in Moscow also began speaking Italian. And, as we know, the court sets fashion and dictates tastes. The first state-run foreign language school outside Moscow, opened in Novgorod in 1703, taught Italian. This was the school of the Likhudov brothers, Greeks from the Venetian colonies who had been educated at the University of Padua.
In short, from Ivan III to Nikolai Gogol, Italianophiles in Rus' constituted the cream of the cultural community. Among them were some truly eccentric individuals.
For example, Pavel Martynovich Skavronsky, the Russian envoy to Naples during the reign of Catherine II, was so passionate about opera that he demanded his servants speak to him in operatic recitative. All of Skavronsky's servants sang; even the coachman, in response to his master's orders, would burst into bass roulades, frightening passersby. Pavel Martynovich himself, of course, also adhered to the operatic canon and sang constantly, even while discussing the dinner menu with the cook.
Mario Corti adds that the Russian diplomat of Peter the Great's time, Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy, constantly spoke with affection about Italy at palace receptions, the company laughed at him, and Peter once forced him to drink the "Great Eagle Cup" to the bottom.
At the same time, the Tsar encouraged the study of Italian, so visitors and specialists from the Italian Peninsula felt quite comfortable in the Russian Empire. And in Crimea, they felt right at home.
Traces of Italy in Russia
Since the Renaissance, Italians have always brought us something extraordinary, whether it was the genius of Fioravanti, opera, Fellini's films, or the Zhiguli automobile. NeMoscow has mapped the presence of Italian culture, art, and technology in Russia and Ukraine. From Odessa, where Italian architects designed Primorsky Boulevard and the Potemkin Stairs, to Magadan, where Italian communists who emigrated to the USSR from Mussolini were imprisoned in Sevvostlag.
