From distant outskirts or the Volga, a slender vertical structure can be seen near the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral and the Church of Tsarevich Dmitry "on the blood," which crowns the ensemble of the Uglich Kremlin. This is the bell tower of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Church, proudly rising above the treetops.

It is likely that the bell tower existed with the cathedral from ancient times, but the first mentions of it are associated with the tragedy in Uglich at the end of the 16th century. In the spring of 1591, the widowed priest Fedot Ogurets informed the residents with the tolling of the bells about the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry, the last of the Rurik dynasty. As a result, a brutal reprisal was carried out against possible murderers, many townspeople were exiled, along with the bell that served as the "culprit" of the events. It was returned from Siberian exile 300 years later.

In the 17th century, a wooden tent-like bell tower was built above the entrance to the cathedral. When a new church was constructed, a new bell tower was needed, but it was erected only in 1730, likely due to Peter's decree of 1714, which prohibited stone construction outside of St. Petersburg.

The bell tower, belonging to a common type in the 18th century, is tiered and octagonal. The powerful lower pillar is topped with open arches of the ringing tier. Above the massive base, a pair of slender octagons and a later added cup-shaped dome rise unexpectedly. The disruption of proportions is explained by the need to fit the building into the Kremlin complex and relate it to the cathedral. A proportional volume would have been lost, and the enormous octagons would have created a massive structure dominating over the cathedral. The architects proposed a compromise option that looks interesting and original.

The features of the bell tower sharply distinguish it from the refined cathedral. It possesses a rough archaic plasticity, expressed in arbitrary lines and the absence of geometric forms. However, this contrast is not noticeable. The Spaso-Preobrazhensky Church and the bell tower form a unified excellent architectural ensemble, a find of provincial architects.

Old clocks were long installed on the old bell tower, marking time with the ringing of bells. In the new building, they functioned until the end of the 19th century, then disappeared. In the 1980s, tower clocks were made at a local clock factory and reinstalled on the bell tower. At that time, the set of bells, destroyed in the 1920s and collected from villages and churches where they miraculously survived, was restored.

Today, as in past centuries, the melodic ringing of bells resonates over Uglich.