Learn More About the Kremlin In 1156, Grand Prince Yury Vladimirovich (nicknamed “Dolgoruky, or “long-armed”), the ruler of a then-obscure town named Moscow, picked a spot for a wooden fortress to protect his humble realm against invaders. Such fortresses, or kremlins, were a common feature of medieval Russian towns and cities. (The origin of the term kremlin is unclear, but some believe it stems from “krem,” the archaic Russian word for timber, while others think it is a variation of the Greek “akropolis,” or citadel.) The grand prince chose what seemed to be an ideal site — atop a hill on a triangular piece of land between the Moscow River and a small tributary, the Neglinnaya (which now flows under Neglinnaya Street, through an underground channel). Over the next two centuries, Moscow’s defenders would add an earthen outer wall, an oak fence and, finally, walls and towers of white limestone. Even with those fortifications, the fortress was overcome and sacked three times by Mongol raiders. The grand princes of Moscow had to pay tribute to the Mongol-Tatar empire until the late 1400s, when Ivan III (also known as “Ivan the Great”) defeated the Tartar Golden Horde and set himself up as the first ruler of Russia, with Moscow as the capital. Ivan also transformed the Kremlin, bringing in Italian architects and artisans to remake his citadel and distinguish it from the culture of Moscow’s former oppressors from Central Asia. The Italians designed the Kremlin’s redbrick outer walls, which are 1½ miles in circumference, and its 19 trademark spired towers. Over the next several hundred years, the Kremlin would be remodeled and redesigned numerous times, incorporating Byzantine and Russian Baroque styles as well. The Kremlin contains numerous architectural masterpieces, including three majestic churches: the white stone Cathedral of the Assumption (built in 1479); the golden-domed Cathedral of the Annunciation (1489), which features the artwork of Andrey Rublyov, the dean of Russian icon painters; and the Archangel Cathedral (1508), which contains the tombs of princes and czars from the 1400s to the 1700s. The Savior Tower (1491), located along the eastern side of the Kremlin near Red Square, is famous for its chimes, which today are broadcast by radio across the nation to signify the time. (Red Square itself contains the gigantic Czar’s Bell, which was cast in 1735 but never rung.) In addition to churches, the Kremlin also contains numerous palaces and government buildings, including the Palace of Facets (1491) and the Kremlin Great Palace, which was built as a residence for Czar Nicholas I in the 1840s and later became the meeting place for the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The Armory Palace (1851) is now a museum housing czarist treasures. When Peter I (“Peter the Great”) transferred the czarist capital from Moscow to the new city of St. Petersburg in the early 1700s, the Kremlin diminished somewhat in importance as a government center. After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, however, their leader Vladimir Lenin moved the government back inside the Kremlin. The Kremlin became a high-security sanctum to which only officials and employees could gain admittance. Despite their penchant for massive construction projects, Soviet leaders only added two buildings to the compound — the School for Red Commanders (1934) and the Palace of Congresses (1961), a cavernous auditorium used for political meetings and theater performances. In 1955, the Kremlin’s churches and palaces were again reopened to the public as museums. In 1991, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, the new Russian Federation parliament evicted Soviet officials from the Kremlin and took it over. Since then, religious services have resumed in the Kremlin’s churches, and the president of the Russian Federation now resides inside the Kremlin’s walls. Just outside the Kremlin is the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed, built in 1560 by Ivan IV (also known as “Ivan the Terrible,” because he executed thousands of his subjects) as a divine offering in thanks after his victories over the Tatars (Mongols) of Kazan and Astrakhan. The cathedral’s nine onion-shaped towers represented a return from Ivan III’s Western tastes to Eastern-influenced architecture, though legend has it the cathedral was designed by an Italian who was blinded immediately afterward, so that he could not replicate it anywhere else.