Nikolskaya Tower is a passage tower of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin. It is located in the upper part between the Kladovaya and Koromyslovaya towers. A pedestrian bridge, built over Zelensky Descent in 1982 on the site of an old wooden bridge constructed “on cages,” adjoins the tower closely.

The tower is named after the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, which once stood on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street, on the opposite side of Zelensky Descent. The church and the adjacent Orthodox burials have not survived to this day, and the place where they were located has been recognized by the authorities of the Nizhny Novgorod region as the historical reserve zone "Nikolskoye Cemetery." In 2013, a chapel was built on the site of the church (now Pozharsky Street).

In the towers of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, built along the slope down to the Pochayna River (Nikolskaya, Koromyslovaya, Taynitskaya), gunpowder storages were housed, and in the ravine itself there was a factory with a windmill — the Zeleny Yard. Although in terms of firepower the Nikolskaya Tower was inferior to the Dmitrievskaya Tower, it served as an important stronghold in the fortress’s defense. The defenders of the Nikolskaya Tower were armed with three copper hand cannons, the largest of which — the "Kazan" — could fire cannonballs weighing 1.8 kilograms. Like all passage towers, Nikolskaya had gates with a protective grille — a hersa — and a drawbridge.

Between 1785 and 1790, the Nizhny Novgorod governor Rebinder carried out a large-scale reconstruction of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, distorting the original appearance of the ancient defensive structure. As part of the "greatest repair," the embrasures of the Nikolskaya Tower were replaced with ordinary rectangular openings, and the battlements were half removed. In the 18th–19th centuries, the tower stored provisions. During the 1837 reconstruction, the structure lost its white-stone facing on the lower walls, which reached the height of the half rampart.

Until 1956, auxiliary rooms of the military department were located within the walls of the Nikolskaya Tower. By 1959, restorers had restored the tower’s tent roof, crowning it with a guard tower.

To this day, the tower, like the entire Kremlin, has survived in rather poor condition — for a long time it was a gathering place for various informal groups, as a result of which it was heavily vandalized with inscriptions and acts of vandalism. However, after some time, the informal gatherings ceased, and video surveillance was installed on the tower.

Sources:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolskaya_Tower_(Nizhny_Novgorod)