Legend has it that the young Tsar Ivan IV approached the walls of Kazan for the first time in 1552 under the flag with an image of the Icon of Our Saviour Not-Made-by-Hand. That occasion was commemorated by the Church of the Icon of Our Saviour Not-Made-by-Hand, which was attached to the tower. The great architect Postnik Yakovlev interrupted his work on the Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow to build this church. His colleague Ivan Shiryai joined him, bringing 200 labourers. The clock was mounted on the tower in the 18th century. Originally the dial of the clock revolved, not the hands. There was a moat in front of the tower until the mid-19th century. The church was demolished in the 1930s and the tower's gate was widened.