Kremlin
kremlin
Kremlin
(Russian, kreml’ the central fortified part of a Russian feudal city. First mentioned in the chronicles for 1331 (kremnik). Other names were also used: detinets until the 14th century and gorod and grad (city) until the 16th and 17th centuries.
The kremlin was usually located in a high place, often on the shore of a river or lake. The relief of the locality dictated its layout, and defensive needs dictated the number of towers and the distances between them. The walls of the kremlin were originally of wood and earth and, from the 11th century, of stone and brick: such walls were started in 1044 in Novgorod and in 1116 in Staraia Ladoga; in Pskov they date from the 13th century. Kremlins were often surrounded by a moat with water. The kremlin usually contained the prince’s palace, a cathedral, and courts of the boyars and the church nobility.
Accentuated by its physical setting, the kremlin dominated the local terrain. It was the nucleus of the formation of the ancient Russian city and defined its silhouette; the roads leading to the kremlin’s gates often became the basis of a radial or fanlike layout for the residential sections (the posady, or merchants’ and artisans’ quarters) that arose near the kremlins. A noteworthy model of a kremlin is the Kremlin in Moscow. In the 16th and 17th centuries, wide-scale construction of stone kremlins proceeded in Nizhny Novgorod (now Gorky), Tula, Kolomna, Zaraisk, Kazan, Rostov Velikii, Serpukhov, Astrakhan, and other cities; in addition to defense, they served as a display of a city’s might and importance. In the replanning of Russian cities in the second half of the 18th and first quarter of the 19th century, the kremlins, which had lost their military-strategic value, were included in city complexes as administrative centers and historical-artistic ensembles.