Serpukhov Kremlin

Serpukhov Kremlin

Description of Serpukhov Kremlin

Serpukhov Kremlin is the central part of the medieval Russian town of Serpukhov. It was built on the left bank of Nara river at the Cathedral Hill. Unlike many other city fortifications in Russia Serpukhov Kremlin was constructed from white stone. Today only parts of the original city walls remain. Serpukhov Kremlin was built in 1374 out of oak tree that grew here in abundance around Nara river. Oak beams gave a shape to city walls and most of strength was provided by soil and rocks that filled the walls. Serpukhov Kremlin had only entrance to make defense of the town easier. Second entrance was added in the 19th century to ease traffic through the historic center. In the 16th century Serpukhov Kremlin becomes part of massive defenses against Crimean Khanate. Serpukhov held a strategic Senkin point that was commonly used to transport people and whole armies on their way to Moscow.

 

White Stone Serpukhov Kremlin was constructed in 1556 replacing wooden military defenses. So current Kremlin repeats the same outline as a medieval Serpukhov fortifications. Military construction didn't end there. Residents of Serpukhov built a wooden fortress to protect Serpukhov harbor. Its total length measure at a thousand meters. Serpukhov Kremlin was demolished during winter 1934 to use material for the construction of the Moscow Subway. Only parts of original city walls survive today.

 

History

The oak Kremlin in Serpukhov was built in 1374 after Prince Vladimir Andreevich made Serpukhov the main city of the specific principality. It was located on a high cape at the confluence of the Serpeika River with the Nara. During the construction, the cape was separated from the Ilyinskaya mountain by a “digging”, and then cut and sprinkled with clay and sand. From the "digging" to the Kremlin, the only entrance was arranged in the form of a steep ramp, following the outline of the shaft (the second entrance, from the south, was made much later, at the beginning of the 19th century).

After 1507, when the Crimean Khanate became a constant and irreconcilable enemy of Rus', Vasily III created a powerful line of defense on the banks of the Oka, based on the fortress cities of the Oka. The center of this defensive system was Serpukhov, standing on the shortest road from Moscow to Tula. In addition, not far from Serpukhov was the famous Senkin ferry, through which the Tatars most often “climbed the Oka”.

The white-stone Kremlin appeared in 1556. The builders of stone walls and towers, gradually replacing the wooden fortifications, repeated the configuration of the oak Kremlin. The new fortress-citadel, without violating the ensemble of ancient Serpukhov at all, introduced two new colors into the urban landscape: the dazzling whiteness of the walls and the golden ocher of the hewn tower roofs.

The fortification of the city did not end with the construction of the stone Serpukhov Kremlin. At the same time, a wooden prison was being built to protect the settlement with the city market. The total length of the prison was more than a thousand meters.

During the Time of Troubles, the strategic frontier guarded by the city-fortress became a frontier of unrest and rebellion, separating the seething, uprising-ridden southern regions of Russia from the central districts of the state adjacent to the capital. Surrounded by numerous supporters, the impostor received the most prominent Moscow boyars in Serpukhov, Bolotnikov’s detachments entered the gates of the impregnable white-stone fortress opened by the inhabitants of the city, the governors of Tsar Vasily Shuisky held a review of the military force gathered in the “Serpukhov campaign” ... In 1609 Serpukhov was stormed by the Poles led by Pan Mlotsky; they will burn the settlements, but they will not be able to take the Kremlin. Hetman Sahaidachny will also try to capture the city in 1618, but he will also not be able to break through the settlement.

In the middle of the 17th century, the last defensive structure of Serpukhov was erected - a newly received prison that protected Podil of the city. It seems that the main purpose of this construction was to protect two high hills - the so-called Voskresenskaya and Afanasievskaya mountains, from which it was possible to conduct direct artillery shelling of the Kremlin.

In 1633, when the Crimean prince Mubarak-Gerai plundered the left-bank districts along the Oka, the inhabitants of Serpukhov shut themselves up in a stone fortress for the last time. Since then, not enemy weapons, but fires have been the most formidable and inevitable disaster for the city. The fire instantly spread throughout the completely wooden city, destroying both residential courtyards, and the wooden buildings of the Serpukhov fortifications, and the tops of the Kremlin towers and walls. After the fire of 1645, the repair of the Kremlin was carried out by the “town builder, the Duma clerk” Afanasy Osipovich Pronchishchev. But nevertheless, in 1650, the voivode Andrey Olenin, who examined the Kremlin, found it in poor condition: “The towers are not covered, the hiding places are lost.” A strong fire in 1669 was the main reason for the beginning of the destruction of the monument. The estimate list of 1681 already speaks of the frequent collapses of the towers.

By the end of the 17th century, Serpukhov finally lost its military significance. The Kremlin and prisons are not being repaired. Only in 1708, fearing the attack of Charles XII on Moscow, Peter I remembers Serpukhov and orders, if possible, to “strengthen and palisade” the city. But the situation, as you know, soon changed, and the need to repair the Serpukhov fortifications disappeared. Their condition constantly worries the city magistrate, as the rotten wooden towers threaten to collapse, and in the Kremlin "stones are falling in considerable numbers." Therefore, in 1767, a decision was made “to dig the city rampart” and dismantle the remaining wooden walls. Probably, for these works, the first large-scale plan of all the defensive structures of the city was drawn up, which is stored in the Military Historical Archive. This document is so far the only source of information about the construction of the white-stone fortifications of the Russian fortified city.

The ruins of the Serpukhov Kremlin attracted the attention of the compilers of the Atlas of Materials for Statistics of the Russian Empire, published in St. Petersburg in 1839. On the two lithographs depicting Serpukhov placed in it, only one southwestern half-tower is marked, and the walls are shown with great losses and destruction. Perhaps, such a picture was, among other things, also the result of the well-known decree of Paul I, who ordered in 1797 to dismantle the dilapidated fortifications of ancient cities near Moscow. Nevertheless, in 1852-1853, the Serpukhov Kremlin, as a recognized "monument of antiquity", was fortified and fragmentarily restored. Some time later (1888), the Archaeological Society secured funds for the further restoration of the best-preserved fragments.

In the winter of 1934, the Kremlin was dismantled for material for the construction of the Moscow Metro. This was done by order of Lazar Kaganovich, according to which rubble stone was required for construction work. Since the construction of the Moscow metro was a political action, everything had to be done very quickly. They decided to take the stone from the most accessible and nearest place - from Serpukhov. To do this, the Serpukhov Kremlin was dismantled for about a year. After that, the cargo was sent to Moscow. However, in the end, the stone was rejected. And it went not to Moscow construction sites, but to other cities. That is, he simply dispersed without a trace across Russia. At the same time, no one compensated for the damage to the cultural heritage of Serpukhov, since it was a state object, and the state itself did not consider it necessary to compensate for the damage. Only two tiny fragments of the walls remained on the Kremlin hill.

 

Kremlin architecture

Kremlin walls and towers

The Serpukhov Kremlin, which has no direct analogies in the practice of building stone fortifications throughout the entire 16th century, is an interesting monument of Russian fortress architecture. First of all, its building material is unique: the Kremlin is completely built of white stone. In other fortresses of that time, white stone already played a supporting role. Even in the second half of the 15th century, this material was almost everywhere replaced by brick, but in Serpukhov, where white stone is literally at hand, construction from it continued until the middle of the 17th century. In addition, the city had its own cadres of professional masons. “Stone Teshot” is written about the inhabitants of Ivanovskaya Sloboda in the hundredth (census) book of 1552, which was compiled, apparently, in order to identify the economic opportunities of the city on the eve of the construction of a stone fortress.

The battle walls covered the territory of the Kremlin, following the outlines of a natural hill, and not the lines of an architectural plan, as was typical for the fortress architecture of the time of Ivan the Terrible. The plan of the Kremlin was an irregular triangle with a perimeter of 933 meters. The widespread use of artillery began to strongly affect the forms of fortifications, and this was primarily reflected in the construction of the walls. With a significant thickness (3.5 meters), they are not so high (6.5-8.5 meters). The wide combat gallery is designed for convenient placement of guns and squeakers. The towers were located in the places of the most significant breaks in the wall, which excluded the possibility of the existence of unfired spaces. The half-towers (there were three of them) are another interesting feature of the Serpukhov Kremlin. They were U-shaped projections of the walls in plan and were taller than ordinary spindles. Half-towers were built near the main towers, on the breaks of the wall, in cases where the intermediate span was relatively short.

The use of artillery had a particularly significant impact on the solution of fortress entrances. If the fortresses of the 14th-15th centuries, unfamiliar with the “fiery duel”, had complex entrances, consisting of diversion archers, zakhabs, etc., then in the fortifications of the 16th century the need for them disappeared - simple travel towers appeared. All the more unexpected in terms of skill and ingenuity of the solution is the system of passage of the Serpukhov Kremlin. This most important defensive knot was a modified sleeve zahab. The existing entrance to the Kremlin led to the Spassky Gates, arranged in the wall between the octagonal Guard Tower and the diversion half-tower. The gate led into a narrow long pocket formed by two parallel walls, one of which was a diversion. And, finally, in order to get to the territory of the Kremlin itself, it was necessary to pass the Big Passing Tower, which, in addition, had a bend of the passage bending at a right angle. The branch part controlled the entrance and at the same time did not interfere with the shooting, since its height was less than the height of the main walls. It even provided a secret passage through which the besieged could unexpectedly hit the enemy.

The appearance of such a passage, typical for fortresses of an earlier time, of course, cannot be explained only by the fact that the new stone kremlin repeated the layout of the old, wooden one. The creators of the Serpukhov Kremlin were well acquainted with the weapons of the Crimean Tatars, who did not have their own siege artillery. True, the Turkish sultan sent them Janissaries with cannons, but there were very few of them, and during the siege of fortresses, mainly field or obsolete guns were used. Therefore, the Crimean Tatars could not count on breaking through the defense of the fortress in any other place, except for the gate. The Serpukhov Kremlin completely ruled out this possibility.

If you approach the very edge of the Kremlin hill, you can find a narrow path that goes around its entire territory in the same place where the battle wall passed. Small platforms along the way are reminiscent of the towers that once towered here. The platform, located above the entrance, marks the site of the octagonal Guard Tower, which housed the powder chamber. Behind it, opposite the settlement, stood the Northern half-tower, which fixed a significant break in the wall. Between the Northern half-tower and the round Voskresenskaya tower following it, there was a small wall spinning. A fragment with a narrow passage has been preserved from it, and in it there is a device for lifting the grating-gersa. The walls on the outer and inner sides were made of massive blocks of white stone, and the middle was rammed with small bedrock on lime mortar. From the inside, the wall was dissected by large arched niches with chambers. Outside, the wall had machicules - special hinged loopholes for shelling the enemy, who broke through directly to its foot.

The next section of the wall from the Resurrection Tower ran parallel to Serpeika to the round small Nikolskaya Tower, in which a wooden hiding place with a well was arranged to supply the besieged with water. A fragment of a wall has also been preserved from this spinner. It was exactly chopped off from the south during the construction of a new entrance, at the same time several buttresses supporting the wall were added. From the south, in the part where the Kremlin was facing the Oka, towards the monasteries, the battle wall was reinforced (and decorated!) with the octagonal Vysotskaya Tower. From it, the wall ran parallel to Nara, and then through the South half-tower and the Big Passing Tower approached the entrance.

 

Buildings inside the Kremlin

Of all the buildings inside the Kremlin, the Trinity Cathedral is currently preserved - an artistic, landscape and spiritual landmark of the entire city.

On a small square in front of the cathedral there was an administrative center of the city and the district. From here, Serpukhov, who paid tribute to the treasury with honey, was ruled by tiuns and governors. During the reform period of the mid-16th century, they were replaced by elected labial elders and city clerks. In addition, Moscow-appointed governors who were in charge of the military forces of the Bereg were almost constantly in the city ... Meanwhile, one should not imagine representative, extensive buildings of local government in the center of ancient Serpukhov. Serpukhov's government, administrative and military, was located in the siding and lip hut, the voivodship house, in a word, in just a few log houses, which looked little different from ordinary city dwellings.

A little aside was the second Kremlin temple - the Church of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica, mentioned since the end of the 15th century.

The rest of the territory of the stone city was filled with siege yards of the surrounding monasteries, estates, villages and villages. Half-empty in peacetime, the siege yards were kept by people specially settled in the fortress - janitors. Whereas everything related to the defense of the Kremlin was under the jurisdiction of city clerks, who monitored the serviceability of the “cages” for squeakers, the “green treasury” with rooms for cores and bullets, “nitrate copper boilers”, “bread granaries”.

Currently, in addition to the Trinity Cathedral, the foundation and fragments of the walls of the Kremlin, on Cathedral Hill there is a memorial to the soldiers who fell in the Great Patriotic War, a stable and several private houses.

 

Excavations on the territory of the Kremlin

The first official archaeological research of the Serpukhov Kremlin was carried out by the local historian N. V. Voronkov in the 1920s. In the 1980s, N. V. Kolyshnitsyn and A. A. Molchanov uncovered the foundations (but not all) of the ancient Kremlin walls. In 2003, the Institute of Architecture of the Russian Academy of Sciences organized new excavations - about 20 square meters were studied. Professor, Doctor of Chemical Sciences A.L. Aleksandrovsky took part in the excavations. In the summer of 2006, the excavation area more than doubled. One of the main initiators of these studies was Artyom Pavlikhin, a researcher at the Serpukhov Museum of History and Art. The excavations were headed by professors of archeology G. N. Belorybkin and V. V. Stavitsky.

In the inner part of the fortress (on a plot of 56 square meters), the researchers had many finds. The remains of the Vysotskaya tower of the Kremlin (1556) were discovered. It was found that the architecture of the Serpukhov fortress had much in common with the northwestern Russian and Western European. It was possible to identify a medieval street that went from the center of the fortress to the Vysotskaya Tower. Along a crooked and narrow street - right next to each other - at home. For the XIV-XV centuries - these are large houses of the princely farmstead. For the XVI-XVII centuries - small houses of the townspeople.

Among the finds dating back to the 16th-17th centuries, there are earrings, buckles, rings, pectoral crosses. Of interest is a copper coin depicting a bird, as well as a rare collection of weapons from the first half of the 17th century: a fragment of a saber, squeaker balls, a bullet, a screw from a firearm, combat knives, arrowheads of a crossbow and a bow. Fragments of the sole of a leather boot or shoe from the beginning of the 15th century are unique. The collection is supplemented with ceramic vessels from the 14th-17th centuries. A particularly interesting find is a unique seal of the 16th century with the inscription “seal of Naim’s fortress” and the image of the sovereign on the throne and two more people - one with a saber raised above his head, the other without a weapon, a crescent moon hangs over their heads.

Flint tools were found on the site of the settlement - traces of human presence there in the Stone Age. In 2006, archaeologists became aware of a burial on Cathedral Hill, performed according to the rite of corpse-burning on the side, which so far has not been attributed to any known archaeological culture. The research revealed the development of the settlement in the XII-XVII centuries, characterized the main discovered structures and objects.