Museums :
[ Architectural Monuments ][ Collections ][ Permanent Exhibitions  ][ Branches ][ Holydays ]

Fortress Works

The history of the first fortress and the first town located on the present Kremlin territory dates back to the first quarter of the 10th century. It was located on a small hill between two ravines exactly on the spot where the present St. Sophia Cathedral with its adjoining square are situated now.

The Kremlin took its present shape during the reign of Novgorod princes Vladimir Yaroslavich (1044) and Mstislav Vladimirovich (1116) when its territory was extended to occupy its present space, though the walls remained wooden. Powerful earthen ramparts, which in the 15th century served as foundations for construction of stone walls and towers according to the Moscow style, have survived to the present day. Some parts of the Kremlin took their final shape only in the 16th - 17th centuries.

A tour around the Kremlin takes only about half an hour. The walls stretch for 4430 feet reaching 13 feet in width in places. Of 13 original towers only 9 have survived: the Vladimirskaya, Fyodorovskaya, Mitropolitchya, Zlatoustovskaya, Preobrazhenskaya, Kokuy, Kniazhnaya, Spasskaya and Dvortsovaya towers.

The only tower set forward outside the walled-up territory - the Pokrovskaya tower - faces a field, the most vulnerable side in case of artillery fire. For this reason the walls of the tower are three meters thick while the facades feature 55 embrasures.

Next to this round tower rises the five-tiered Zlatoustovskaya tower, famous for the fact that in the 17th century it was turned into a prison (hence its former name - Tyuremnaya, or Prison Tower).

The Northwestern part of the Kremlin has a different landscape, totally untypical of its other parts mostly due to two round towers which had never been widely used in Novgorod architecture. One of them -the Metropolitchya tower - before the 17th century was called after its shape the Kruglaya (Round) or the Krasnaya (Red) tower. The Fyodorovskaya tower was named after the church erected in memory of Fyodor, Alexander Nevsky's younger brother who died, ironically, during his own wedding.

The Novgorod Kremlin always served as the main part of the city's defense system. Even in the old days it was complete with earthen ramparts topped with wooden walls - the ostrog, enclosing and protecting the growing villages on the Sophia and the Marketplace sides. In the 16th century the detinets was enforced with still another belt of walls including a smaller earthen rampart, which was practically completely destroyed in the days of Catherine the Great when the city's layout was changed drastically.