Smolensk Kremlin
The Smolensk Kremlin ( Russian Смоленский кремль ) was once one of the most powerful citadels in Tsarist Russia . Parts of the fortification wall, which was built at the end of the 16th century in the traditions of the Old Russian Kremlin , have been preserved to this day. The former fortress is located on a hill near the Dnieper River in the center of today's big city Smolensk .
general description
Due to the particularly important strategic position of the Smolensk Citadel - Smolensk has always been considered the western outpost of Moscow and later the Russian state - when it was completed, it had dimensions that were in many ways superior even to the capital's Kremlin : The total length was the protective wall 6.5 kilometers with a height of up to 19 and a width of up to 5.2 meters and a total of 38 watchtowers were built into the wall. However, since Smolensk was subject to frequent attacks into the 20th century due to its border location, the Kremlin ensemble suffered considerable damage over time, so that today only barely half of the original Kremlin wall with a total of 17 preserved towers remains.
In addition to the actual fortification facilities, the original ensemble of the Kremlin contained a large number of sacred and civil buildings within the Kremlin walls. Few of them have survived to this day. Particularly noteworthy are the church buildings on the so-called Cathedral Hill, which - similar to the Cathedral Square of the Moscow Kremlin - once formed the center of the Smolensk Citadel. The most famous of these buildings is the monumental Cathedral of the Assumption (Russian: Успенский собор ) from 1740.
history
As one of the oldest cities in Russia, Smolensk had its own fortifications centuries before the Kremlin was built. It is known, for example, that in the 12th century there was a protective wall here made of oak, which was built under Grand Duke Rostislav . In the 15th century Smolensk was under the rule of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and was not conquered by the Grand Duchy of Moscow until 1514 . Since the city was now in front of the western border of Moscow State, the construction of a new fortress was essential. In 1595 the builder Fyodor Kon was brought from Moscow to Smolensk by tsar's decree. The special strength of the fortress required an enormous amount of material and personnel: for the construction, which lasted from 1596 to 1602, around 150 million bricks were used, for the transport of which human chains of up to 50,000 workers were erected. Numerous workers died because of the sometimes unbearable working conditions.
Just a few years after the completion of the citadel, it had to withstand an attack: During the Polish-Lithuanian invasion of Russia at the beginning of the 17th century, in the so-called time of turmoil , a troop of around 22,000 men of King Sigismund III besieged . the Smolensk Kremlin and was only able to take it after a 20-month blockade. In 1654 Smolensk went back to Russia, but the Kremlin had already suffered considerable damage by that time. The war against Napoleon in 1812 , when the city was temporarily under French occupation, and the fighting in World War II, made the Kremlin even more troubled.
The remnants of the Smolensk Kremlin are now under protection as an important monument of the Russian fortification architecture of the 16th century.
See also
literature
- Галина Вацлавна Длужневская, Владимир Александрович Калинин, Андрей Викторович Сужневская, Кремсандрович Калинин, Андрей Викторович Сукторович Субибовин : XV - XVII. Литера, Санкт-Петербург 2006, ISBN 5-94455-523-8 , pp. 228-233.
Web links
- http://kremli.ucoz.ru/publ/2-1-0-4 (Russian)
- http://rusarh.ru/smolensk.htm (Russian)
Coordinates: 54 ° 47 ′ 11.3 " N , 32 ° 3 ′ 55.9" E