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+--- Thread: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens (/thread-5199.html)
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 04-01-2026
(04-01-2026, 12:04 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Can you show me any building with the proportions of the rightmost "tower"?
In terms of (diameter of the dome)/(diameter of the tower), there is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in St.Petersburg. The ratio is ~2.2. The rightmost tower in the Rosettes has ratio ~4.1. Is that "close enough" for a Scribe who cannot divide a circle into four equal parts?
It is easy to see why that rightmost tower is so slender. The Scribe, as usual, started drawing the six towers left to right, without any planning. When he got to that tower, he started drawing the base but found that he had not enough space for a full-width one. Even running into the framing circle, he could only squeeze a base that big. The narrow base determined a narrow tower. But he naturally made the dome with the same size as the others, otherwise the result would be too ugly even by his standards.
Now, can you show me a real apothecary jar that is 100 meters tall?
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 04-01-2026
(03-01-2026, 05:36 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Many towers with onion or bulb-shaped roofs in Jerusalem:
Yes. Those are mosques, as we can see from the moon icons atop the towers.
The VMS objects have no moons, but a transfixed ball.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Aga Tentakulus - 04-01-2026
The domes (onion-shaped) are of Swiss-Italian origin. The church was built to bring the headquarters of the Eastern Roman Church from Istanbul to Moscow, which did not happen. The main church is still the Hagia Sophia, built on the Roman model of the Pantheon.
The roofs of the towers were planned to be spherical. However, the high snow load in the region would have caused the spheres to collapse. For this reason, the domes were designed to taper at the top so that the snow would not accumulate.
The planning took place around 1480. Therefore, the VM shape cannot have anything to do with the churches.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 04-01-2026
(04-01-2026, 03:57 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The domes (onion-shaped) are of Swiss-Italian origin. The church was built to bring the headquarters of the Eastern Roman Church from Istanbul to Moscow, which did not happen. The main church is still the Hagia Sophia, built on the Roman model of the Pantheon.
The roofs of the towers were planned to be spherical. However, the high snow load in the region would have caused the spheres to collapse. For this reason, the domes were designed to taper at the top so that the snow would not accumulate.
The planning took place around 1480. Therefore, the VM shape cannot have anything to do with the churches.
Not according to Wikipedia:
"It is not completely clear when and why the onion dome gained popularity in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but buildings featuring them appeared as early as the 13th century,"
"The site of [St. Basil's cathedral] had historically been a busy marketplace between the St. Frol's (later Saviour's) Gate of the Moscow Kremlin and the outlying posad. The centre of the marketplace was marked by the Trinity Church, built of the same white stone as the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy (1366–68) and its cathedrals. Tsar Ivan IV marked every victory of the Russo-Kazan War by erecting a wooden memorial church next to the walls of Trinity Church; by the end of his Astrakhan campaign, it was shrouded within a cluster of seven wooden churches. According to the report in Nikon's Chronicle, in the autumn of 1554 Ivan ordered the construction of the wooden Church of Intercession on the same site, "on the moat".[14] One year later, Ivan ordered the construction of a new stone cathedral on the site of Trinity Church to commemorate his campaigns. Dedication of a church to a military victory was "a major innovation"[7] for Muscovy. The placement of the church outside the Kremlin walls was a political statement in favour of posad commoners and against hereditary boyars."
And the Panteon dome is a single piece of massive concrete, while that of Hagia Sophia is made of bricks and mortar.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 04-01-2026
(04-01-2026, 03:57 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The domes (onion-shaped) are of Swiss-Italian origin.
if you are referring to the "onion towers" ("Zwiebeltürme") of Switzerland, those seem to be a Baroque (17th century) "import" from Germany and Austria.
Here is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. depicting an onion dome. Admittedly this still looks like the Persian/Pakistani/Indian domes in the proportions, finish, and tip. (The peacocks may be related to that, perhaps?)
And here is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Polish(?) manuscript featuring a onion dome. (The manuscript is believed to be a copy of a 13th century original, but it is possible that the images were "updated" by the copyist.) Admittedly this dome is only a little wider than the tower; not more than twice as wide, as the St. Petersburg example I posted earlier.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Aga Tentakulus - 04-01-2026
Some scholars believe that onion domes first appeared in Russia during the reign of Ivan the Terrible (r. 1533–1584). The domes of St. Basil's Cathedral have remained unchanged since the reign of Ivan's son, Fyodor I (reigned 1584–1598), indicating the presence of onion domes in 16th-century Russia.
The church from 13xx collapsed and the architect was executed for it, and the church was later rebuilt.
For this reason, architects from Italy and Switzerland were called in. Later, architects from other countries were also called in.
The reason was the great fire in Moscow. By order of the Tsar, no more wooden houses were allowed to be built within the city walls.
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Koen G - 04-01-2026
Why on earth would we expect consistent scales?
![[Image: 26_640x.jpg]](https://caravans.library.northwestern.edu/img/works/26/26_640x.jpg)
(That's from the Catalan atlas by the way, look at them domes).
The flags are hundreds of meters tall. The human figures could crush entire cities underfoot!
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 04-01-2026
(04-01-2026, 01:04 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(That's from the Catalan atlas by the way, look at them domes).
Interesting! It seems that the cartographer had onion domes on all the buildings of the Muslim world and Asia, and conical roofs on all the European ones. Which would be consistent with the claims that the Russians, in the 13th century or earlier, copied their onion domes from Persia and/or Asian countries and/or the Mongols.
Quote:Why on earth would we expect consistent scales? The flags are hundreds of meters tall. The human figures could crush entire cities underfoot!
Still, in the VMS central rosette the "medicine jars" are clearly meant to reach all the way to the starry heavens and beyond...
By the way, people are aware that there is a tiny T-O map at the very NE corner of f85v2, right?
Which means that the land depicted in the fold-out is not on Earth, but on another much bigger planet.
And obviously those six towers at the center of this world are the explanation for this You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - bi3mw - 04-01-2026
(04-01-2026, 01:04 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Why on earth would we expect consistent scales?
Yes, it is hardly possible to expect proportionality and correct scales. The decisive criterion for the representation of image elements was often simply their importance. In the Catalan world atlas, for example, the flags are more important than the buildings themselves. The oversized depiction of the ruler (Mansa Musa in your image excerpt) also makes sense in this context.
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Aga Tentakulus - 04-01-2026
Moscow experienced several major fires in the 15th century, with the Great Fire of 1493 (also known as the ‘Great Fire Day’) being particularly significant. It destroyed large parts of the city, including the Kremlin and the barracks of the Moscow garrison, causing considerable destruction and the deaths of thousands of people, and greatly influencing the city's development. The fires of 1488 and 1492 were also significant, but the one in 1493 led to a comprehensive restructuring of the city with stone buildings, especially under Ivan III, in order to minimise future damage.
It was not Ivan III who was decisive for the changes, but Sophia.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
These are all incidental findings in the search for the truth about the swallowtail women in Moscow.
Hence the video by Koen.