Vladimir is
one of the cities that played the major role in the emergence of
the Russian state. The history of the city goes back over one thousand
years.
The town was founded in the 990s by Prince Vladimir, the Baptizer
of Russia, on the bank of the Klyazma which was a full-flowing river
at that time. In the middle of the 12th century, during Andrei Bogolyubsky's
reign, the town became the centre of North-eastern Russia, and during
the period of the Mongol invasion Vladimir became the new Russian
capital.
The history of the city has much in common with that of Kiev, and
even the most impressive view of the city from beyond the Klyazma
bears a slight resemblance to the view of Kiev over the Dnieper
. Vladimir owed its rise and period of glory in the second half
of the 12th century to its prince Andrei Bogolyubsky. He transformed
the town into a large fortress with several beautiful gates: the
Golden, the Silver, the Copper, the Volga gates and some others.
A general picture of the city layout was rather picturesque, with
its streets, squares, gardens and monasteries.
Not far from the city of Vladimir, where the Nerl flows into the
Klyazma, there is the former residence of Andrei Bogolyubsky with
the world renowned Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, which
is considered to be one of the most poetic masterpieces of Russian
architecture. The Cathedrals of the Assumption and of Saint Demetrios
were erected in the city of Vladimir. Their whitestone walls were
covered by luxurious carved adornments.
The precious frescoes by Andrei Rublev and Daniil Chorny can be
seen nowadays in the Assumption Cathedral. Many famous historical
personalities and Russian saints are buried under the vaults of
the Cathedral.
The city of Vladimir has enjoyed times of prosperity and known periods
of decline. In the 13th century when Vladimir suffered heavy damage
during the Mongol invasion, in spite of this for the next 200 years
the nominal seniority among Russian cities belonged to Vladimir.
Then Moscow was recognised as the centre of Russia. In 1395 the
icon of Holy Virgin Mary of Vladimir, most holy relic of the city, was moved
to Moscow. At the end of the 18th century Vladimir became the centre
of the province, yet it retained its individuality and attractiveness.
The city has many monuments of civil architecture of the 18th -
early 20th centuries to its credit. The cities residents hold in
esteem its history and take care to keep in harmony old and new
buildings. Vladimir is famous for its rich and diverse museum expositions
which reveal the ancient culture, heroic history and modern life
in this fascinating town.
Geographical
Situation of Vladimir
The
old town of Vladimir was situated in extremely picturesque surroundings on the
left bank of the River Klyazma. It stood on a high piece of ground intersected
by deep gullies, bordered by the Klyazma on the south and the valley of the small
River Lybed on the north (which has since been covered over to form part of the
cities water supply system). The town was in the shape of an elongated triangle
spread out along the banks of the Klyazma with its most acute angle pointing to
East. On the other side of the Klyazma stretched water-meadows fringed with a
dark belt of hazy forest receding into the far distance. To the north and east
of the town across the valleys of the Lybed and Irpen the land began to rise again
up to the old villages of Dobroye and Krasnoye, which formerly stood apart from
Vladimir with their beautifully situated Churches that could be seen for miles
around. Today they have practically become part of the town itself. In olden days
the town was bordered on the west by vast stretches of ancient pine forest. At
that time the Klyazma was a large, important river wending its way in loops and
curves across a wide belt of water-meadows near Vladimir to join the broad river
Oka which linked the lands between the Oka and Klyazma with the ancient trading
waterway of Eastern Europe - the Volga. It is not surprising that the gates of
Vladimir leading to the Klyazma were called the Volga Gates. Situated on the remote
borders of the Kiev state, the Zalessky region (which means "beyond the forests")
with its ancient cities of Rostov and Suzdal was generously endowed with natural
resources. Its forests provided pelts, its river and lakes were teeming with fish,
the fertile water-meadows provided excellent pastures, and last, but by no means
least, there were the rich open plains to the Northwest of the Klyazma, which
were ideal for agriculture. The
first settlements on this place.
The
first settlements to appear on this spot date back to the dim and distant past.
Archaeological excavations have revealed traces of Finno-Ugrian settlements dating
back to the first century A.D. not far from the Cathedral on the elevated Southwest
point of the hill where the old town grew up. Later, in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, the first Slavic settlers from the Smolensk Krivichy tribe and the
Slovenes of the Novgorod area began to appear. This high promontory rising forty
to fifty metres above the Klyazma attracted early settlers because of its impregnability,
providing a natural means of defence which was most important at a time when primitive
tribal society was disintegrating and being replaced by a feudal society. XI
century (Prince Vsevolod Yaroslavovich)
It
was only natural that this fertile, densely populated area on the Northeast border
of the Kiev state should soon attract the attention of the Kiev princes. In the
eleventh century it came under the rule of Prince Vsevolod I and his descendants,
and by the end of the century a bitter internecine feud had broken out for possession
of the north-eastern lands. The feudal struggles that ensued showed the vital
strategic importance of the elevated ridge of ground along the Klyazma which faced
the hostile principalities of Ryazan and Murom and protected Suzdal from the Southwest
This was the decisive factor which caused the peaceful settlement of traders and
craftsmen on the high promontory above the Klyazma to be transformed into a mighty
fortress erected by Vsevolod's son, Vladimir Monomakh, in the year 1108. XII
century (Prince Vladimir Monomakh)
The
feudal struggles that ensued showed the vital strategic importance of the elevated
ridge of ground along the Klyazma which faced the hostile principalities of Ryazan
and Murom and protected Suzdal from the Southwest This was the decisive factor
which caused the peaceful settlement of traders and craftsmen on the high promontory
above the Klyazma to be transformed into a mighty fortress erected by Vsevolod's
son, Vladimir Monomakh, in the year 1108. The shape of the fortress was dictated
by the lie of the land. It was bounded to the south by the steep banks of the
Klyazma, to the north by the Lybed valley, and to the east and west by the steep
gullies in the plateau. At their far ends they were joined by ditches which thus
cut the town off from the rest of the plateau. At these points there must have
been towers and gates through which the road from Kiev in the south crossed the
town on its way to the heart of the principality, Suzdal. Vladimir's builders
constructed huge earth ramparts crowned with wooden walls all the way round the
fortress. Traces of these ancient ramparts can still be seen in Proletarskaya
Street (the Northeast corner of the old town) and Komsomolskaya Street (Northwest
corner). Originally they covered a perimeter of 2.5 kilometres. Inside the town
walls, probably on the highest point overlooking the Klyazma, Monomakh built the
first stone Church, the Church of Our Saviour. The new town was called Vladimir
in honour of its founder, and this asymmetrical quadrangular fortress became the
heart of the future capital of Northeast Russia. XII
century (Prince Yuriy Dolgoruky)
Vladimir
Monomakh's heir, prince Yuriy Dolgoruky, was too occupied with the struggle for
the throne of Kiev to pay much attention to his northern possessions. It was not
until a short time before his death that, evidently realising the futility of
this struggle, he began to build a series of new fortress cities in the Northeast,
including the fortress of Moscow. A new royal palace was erected in Vladimir with
a Church made of white stone (1157) and dedicated to Saint George, the prince's
patron saint. The palace stood on a high point of the town hill overlooking the
southern slopes, to the west of Monomakh's fortress. By the middle of the twelfth
century the town appears to have spread eastwards as well along the road to Suzdal.
New settlers arrived from the towns of the Dnieper basin and Kiev itself,
riven by internecine feuds. This explains why many of the rivers around Vladimir
were named after rivers near Kiev - the Lybed, Irpen and Pochaina. Right up to
the last century in this region there was Prince's Meadow (Knyazhy Loog)
and Yarilo Valley (Yarilova Dolina), named after the pagan Slavonic sun
god. XII
century (Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky)
The
rapid growth of the town, its large population, rich natural resources and strategic
importance led to it being made the capital of the Vladimir principality, Yuriy
Dolgoruky's son Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky, decided to transfer his residence from
the south to Vladimir - a town of craftsmen and traders.
These ordinary people
gave tremendous support to the Vladimir princes in their struggle against the
rich boyars for control of the principality and helped them to increase the political
importance of the Vladimir lands in their efforts to save the country from being
ruined by feudal warfare.
A great deal of splendid building was carried out
between 1158-1165. Earth ramparts were erected round the cities new unfortified
sections which had grown up to the east and west of Monomakh's fortress now referred
to as the Middle Town. As in the time of Monomakh, the new fortifications were
bounded to the west by the gullies leading to the Klyazma and Lybed. The western
part of the town had four turreted gates: the Volga Gates at the foot of the Middle
Town leading to the jetty on the Klyazma, the wooden Irina (Irininy Vorota)
and Copper (Medniye Vorota) gates on the slopes of the gullies leading
to the Lybed, and the Golden Gate (Zolotiye Vorota)
made of white stone through which the main road to the south ran. The ends of
the gullies were joined at the Golden Gate by a deep ditch with a bridge across
it. Traces of the western ramparts can still be found to the south of the Golden
Gate at Kozlov Val.
Andrei had a new royal palace and white stone Church
of Our Saviour (1164) erected by the Golden Gate next to Yuriy Dolgoruky's
palace. The whole western part of the town was clearly set aside for the prince
and the rich boyars. The eastern section, a triangular wedge whose long sides
sloped down from the promontory, formed the posad where the tradesmen and artisans
lived. It was also surrounded by earth ramparts with wooden walls and at its easternmost
tip the Silver Gates (Serebryaniye Vorota) were built of white stone by
a bridge across the Lybed from whence the road ran on to the royal palace at Bogolyubovo
and Suzdal.
Traces of the so-called Conception Ramparts
(Zachatyevsky Val) can be found behind the houses on the north side of
Froonze Street. Chronicles refer to the Middle Town as Cave Town (Pecherny
Gorod). The western part is called the New Town (Novy Gorod), and the
eastern quarter, whose fortifications began to crumble and collapse within a few
centuries, is known as the Decayed Town (Vetchany Gorod).
The cities
ramparts now covered a total perimeter of 7 kilometres which was more than those
of Kiev (4 kilometres) and Novgorod (6 kilometres). The large Cathedral
of the Assumption (Uspensky Sobor) (1158-1160) was built on the elevated
south-western corner of the Middle Town. Together with the white stone Churches
of Saint George and Our Saviour,
which were also situated high up on the southern edge of the town, the
Assumption Cathedral formed part of Vladimir's strikingly beautiful southern
facade. Its longitudinal axis was decorated with the towers of the
Golden Gate, the Trading Gates (Torgoviye Vorota) in the west wall
of the Middle Town, the Ivan Gates (Ivanovskiye Vorota) in the east wall
of the Middle Town, and the Silver Gates at the easternmost tip of the town. XII-XIII
centuries (Prince Vsevolod III)
The
next stage in the architectural history of the city came at the end of the twelfth
and beginning of the thirteenth centuries. The strengthening of the Grand Prince's
power under Vsevolod III and the increasing political awareness of the citizens
of Vladimir resulted in a number of serious riots and uprisings. The prince decided
to move his residence to the Middle Town. A sumptuous stone palace with the Cathedral
of Saint Demetrios (1194-1197) was erected by the south wall next to the Episcopal
residence. This section of the Middle Town, which was known as the Detinets
(an archaic Russian word meaning inner fortress, or citadel of the reigning prince),
was surrounded by stone walls with fortified gates (1194-1196) to separate the
residences of the prince and bishop from the hustle and bustle of the city. The
Assumption Cathedral had been badly damaged in the fire of 1185 and Vsevolod had
new walls erected round the old building (1185-1189). As a result of this the
Cathedral now had five aisles instead of the former three and this increase in
size emphasised, as it were, the importance of the citadel as the architectural
centre of the city. The Monastery of the Nativity (Rozhdestvensky Monastyr) was
built in the southeast corner of the Middle Town with a Cathedral of white stone
(1192-1195). This new ensemble formed a kind of second inner citadel. The rowdy
Vladimir market was moved to the north part of the Middle Town (behind the Street
of the Third International) facing the menacing fortified walls of the citadel.
In 1218 Vsevolod's successor. Prince Konstantin, erected the small Church of the
Exaltation of the Cross (Vozdvizheniye) on this spot. Princess Mariya , the wife
of Vsevolod III, founded the Convent of the Assumption (Svyato-Uspensky Monastyr
also known as the Knyagmin Monastyr or Princess Convent) with a Cathedral made
of brick (1200-1201) which was erected in the northwest corner of the New Town. XIII
century (Prince Konstantin)
The
foregoing is a brief account of how the old city of Vladimir grew up with its
many splendid buildings. It should be emphasised that the most important structures,
i. e., the stone buildings, were very few in number. The vast majority of the
Churches were made of wood. We know, for example, that in the twelfth century
a wooden Church of Saint Nicholas stood on the slopes leading down to the river
outside the Golden Gate, and that further west on a high piece of ground there
were the wooden buildings of the Monastery of the Ascension (Voznesensky Monastyr).
By this time dwellings had started to appear outside the walls of the New Town.
It is possible that the old street name Gonchari (Potters) dates back to this
period. We learn from the chronicles that 32 Churches were burnt down in Vladimir
during the great fire of 1185. The rich dwellings of the merchants and boyars
and the houses of the ordinary people were all built of wood. We can now get a
general picture of the cities layout and buildings in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. It took the form of a triangle consisting of three sections which had
grown up at different stages and bounded on two sides by the Klyazma and Lybed.
The central street ran from one end of the city to the other (along what is now
Moskovskaya Saint, Third International Saint and Frunze Saint) and was intersected
by four turreted gates. Entering the city through the Golden Gate the traveller
would see the royal palaces with the Church of Our Saviour and the Church of Saint
George on the right. On the left in the distance was the ensemble of the Princess
Convent. These impressive buildings stood out against the broad panorama of the
water-meadows and distant forests beyond the Klyazma and the gentle wooded slopes
to the north. Straight ahead of the traveller rose the earth ramparts and walls
of the Middle Town and the wooden tower of the Trading Gates. Beyond the walls
in the southern corner he could see the huge white building of the Assumption
Cathedral with its five domes. Passing through the Trading Gates into the Middle
Town the traveller would find himself in the centre of the capital. On the right
behind the white walls of the citadel he could see the shining golden domes of
the Assumption Cathedral and the turrets of the episcopal residence, the Cathedral
of Saint Demetrios and Vsevolod's palace, with the Cathedral of the Monastery
of the Nativity in the distance. On the left was the market square and the Church
of the Exaltation of the Cross against a background of meadows stretching as far
as the eye could see. In front of him were the eastern walls of the Middle Town
with the Ivan Gates. These gates led into the cities trading and artisan quarter
(posad), where the houses and Churches were all built of wood. At this point the
triangle tapered off and the town looked more like a large village with its main
street lined with buildings. This impression would have been reinforced by the
open countryside which lay beyond the town walls to the south and eaSaint The
main street finally passed through the Silver Gates leaving the city and joining
the road to Dobroye, Bogolyubovo and Suzdal. We do not know the exact layout of
the other streets, but bearing in mind that the Decayed Town was quite narrow
it is reasonable to assume that they were similar to the short narrow alleys leading
off the main street today. In the Middle Town a large area was taken up by the
market and it is most likely that the streets from the northeast part of the city
converged on this spot. In the New Town there appears to have been a street leading
from the Copper Gates by the Lybed along the ramparts to the Volga Gates on the
Klyazma. It is possible that there was also a street linking the Trading and Irina
Gates. It was not only inside the walls that one saw a succession of splendid
views of the city and its buildings. Its builders attached possibly even more
importance to the appearance of its outer "facades" which were obviously planned
to impress travellers approaching the city from different directions. They made
skilful use of the cities hilly relief to create an architectural ensemble which
dominated the surrounding countryside. From the Yuryev-Polsky road and the open
fields that rose gently to the northwest one had an excellent view of the whole
city somewhat elevated. From the hills down which the Suzdal road approached Vladimir
from the east you could see the city climbing gently upwards. Close behind the
Silver Gates came the wooden houses of the people interspersed with tall wooden
Churches. Rising behind them were the walls of the Middle Town with the Ivan Gates
and towers, and further still on the left were the gleaming cupolas of the Cathedrals
in the Monastery of the Nativity and the citadel. But without a doubt the most
impressive view of the city was from the south, where it faced onto the Klyazma
and the vast expanse of water-meadows and forest through which the road to Murom
ran. From here one saw the city stretched out in all its splendour, similar to
Kiev on the Dnieper . On a hill to the west there were the wooden buildings
of the Monastery of the Ascension and the Church of Saint Nicholas. At the southern
corner of the New Town the ramparts began to descend down to the Volga Gates only
to rise again sharply up to the corner of the Middle Town. Behind the walls in
a semicircular hollow on the hillside were a mass of small houses and gardens,
and above them on the edge of the high plateau stood the royal palaces with the
Church of Our Saviour and the Church of Saint George, and the steep gabled roofs
of the merchants' and boyars' dwellings. The focal point of the whole panorama
was the Assumption Cathedral standing on the corner of the Middle Town with its
domes glittering proudly. On a line with it were the smaller Cathedrals of Saint
Demetrios and the Nativity spaced more or less evenly apart. Standing right on
the edge of the plateau they created the illusion that the whole of the city was
full of similar buildings of white stone. From its highest point, the Assumption
Cathedral, the outline of the city began to descend slowly and gently. The skyline
of the lowest part, the Decayed Town with its tall wooden Churches and the tent-shaped
spires of the fortified towers, was jagged and more sharply defined. The view
of the city from the south was most magical and impressive in the early morning
at sunrise when the water-meadows and the high ground on which the city was situated
were enveloped in a swirling blanket of white mist and the golden domes of the
stone Cathedrals flamed in the early rays of the sun like something out of a fairy
tale. There can be no doubt that the magnificent views which the city presents
from both inside and outside are not simply accidental. They were the result of
very careful planning by its architects. The desire to set buildings off to their
best advantage, which was typical of all the architecture belonging to the time
of Andrei Bogolyubsky and Vsevolod III as we shall see later, is also a prominent
feature of their capital, Vladimir. The great flowering of culture that took place
in the Vladimir domains was a result of the progressive rule of the "Vladimir
autocrats" who allied with the people and minor nobility to gain control of the
Russian lands and prevent the country from being weakened and disunited by the
warring feudal princes. This policy was also in the interests of the peasants
who were suffering badly from the havoc wrought by the bitter internecine struggles.
It was accompanied by a great flowering of architecture and the arts, as well
as a spate of literary activity. Chronicles were kept in the city of Vladimir.
Andrei Bogolyubsky's chronicler and spiritual advisor, Mikula, frequently praised
the staunchness and patriotism of the citizens of Vladimir in the struggle to
protect their interests. There was a great deal of writing by Vladimir priests
and monks intended to demonstrate the ecclesiastical importance of the Vladimir
lands. They composed lays about the various "miracles" performed by the icon of
the Virgin of Vladimir and wrote many works in praise of Bishop Leontius who was
killed in the eleventh century during an uprising by the people of Rostov and
subsequently became the "martyr" of the north. They introduced new prayers and
ritual for the Vladimir Church festival of the Intercession of Holy Virgin Mary. Finally,
there was Mikula's beautifully written, moving account of the murder of Andrei
Bogolyubsky by the boyars. All these works show a high level of literary achievement
stemming from Kievan folklore traditions. They are all dominated by a single political
idea, namely, the right of Vladimir to rule the whole of Russia and the need for
a united state. The forces of feudal disintegration gained the upper hand, however,
and after the death of Vsevolod III in 1212 the unity of his lands was broken.
This left the country weakened and divided on the eve of the Mongol invasion.
XIII-XV
centuries (Mongol invasion)
The Mongols
reached Vladimir in 1238. After a stubborn siege the city eventually
fell to the invaders who looted and set fire to it. Even after this
great disaster, however, the city continued to be regarded by the
people of the time as the centre of northeast Russia and the repository
of its political and cultural traditions. Vladimir became the residence
of the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church at the end of
the thirteenth century. The Grand Duchy of Vladimir was fiercely
contested by the rulers of Moscow and Tver, and coronations to the
Russian throne continued to take place under the tall arches of
the Assumption Cathedral. Both Moscow
and Tver modelled their architecture on that of Vladimir. Saint
Grand Duke Dimitri Donskoi put the Cathedral
of Saint Demetrios under his patronage, and in 1380 on the eve
of the battle of Kulikovo the famous twelfth-century icon of the
Saint Martyr Demetrios of Thesaloniki (Dimitri Solunsky)
was taken from the Saint Demetrios Cathedral to Moscow. In 1395
Vladimir's most treasured relic, the icon of the Virgin of Vladimir,
was removed to the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. Moscow
not only borrowed from Vladimir's historical traditions, but also
acquired many of the twelfth-century works of art made in Vladimir.
In 1408 after a devastating raid on the city by the Mongols when
the Assumption Cathedral was damaged by fire. Prince Vasiliy I sent
the great Russian painter Andrei Rublev to restore its murals. Two
years later the city was again sacked by the Mongols. In 1469 a
talented Russian architect, Vasiliy Yermolin, restored the Golden
Gate and the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross on the Market
Place, which had both been severely damaged and fallen into a dilapidated
state. The cities fortifications were not restored on their former
scale. Only the wooden walls of the Middle Town were rebuilt in
1486, and again in 1491 and 1536. The ramparts of the west and east
sections of the city gradually fell into a state of disrepair until
they eventually disappeared altogether. At the end of the fifteenth
century the Assumption Cathedral in the Princess Convent was rebuilt
by architects from Moscow.
XV-XVII
centuries
From
then onwards Vladimir ceased to be the capital of the northeast
lands and simply became one of the cities in the Muscovite state,
a city with great memories and sacred relics. It developed extremely
slowly. In 1489 settlers from Novgorod formed a sloboda (Siohoda:
a settlement in feudal Russia whose inhabitants were temporanly
exempt from taxes and other duties) on the opposite bank of the
Lybed, known as the Varvarka Sloboda. Two other settlements appeared
in the same area in the middle of the sixteenth century, the Streletskaya
Sloboda and Pushkarskaya Sloboda, which eventually combined to form
the one Streletskaya Sloboda. Another two appeared in the seventeenth
century - Upper and Lower Borovki. Legend has it that the latter
was founded by the early Novgorod settlers and the large brick house
belonging to the Babushkin merchant family was first built in the
sixteenth century. The earliest available figures of the cities
population show it to have been very small. In 1584, for example,
there were only twenty homesteads in the Streletskaya and Pushkarskaya
settlements, and in 1592 only one hundred inhabitants. It was at
this time that the Yamskaya (Coachmen's) Sloboda grew up just outside
the Golden Gate, with its wooden Church of the Holy Virgin of Kazan.
Behind it stretched Yamskoi Bor (pine forest). In 1668 the city
possessed only 990 inhabitants and 400 houses; the craftsmen and
artisans lived in the eastern part and the traders in the western
quarter where, in 1684, there was a Traders' Mart (Gostiny Dvor)
with 392 small stalls on the market place, and the Church of Holy
Great-Martyr Paraskeva Pyatnitsa, the patron saint of trade. The
practice of building in stone was revived again in the seventeenth
century. Although there can be no comparison with the golden age
of Vladimir architecture, the builders of this period took great
pains to see that their new buildings blended in with the old ones.
In 1649, for example, Vladimir merchants erected the elegant Church
of Holy Virgin Mary
in the posad which fitted in beautifully with the cities southern
aspect. The huge tent-shaped bell tower built over the stone gates
of the citadel emphasised the ancient architectural centre of the
city by its high vertical lines. A similar, but more elegant bell
tower was built in the Monastery of the Nativity, together with
the Holy Gates (Svyatiye Vorota) which had murals on the walls of
the entrance arch. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the
Monastery 's old wooden walls were replaced by stone ones, forming
a kind of ornamental "kremlin", or fortress, on the southeast side
of the Middle Town. The small Church of Saint Nicholas and a square-shaped
bell tower were built in the courtyard of the old royal palace near
the Church of Our Saviour. This process of enhancing the cities
southern aspect was continued by eighteenth-century builders who
replaced the old wooden Churches with stone ones, such as the Church
of Saint Nicholas at the Galleys (1735) at the foot of Kozlov Val,
and the Church of the Ascension (1724).
XVIII-XIX
centuries
The ingenuous
plan of Vladimir drawn by an icon painter in 1715 gives some idea of the layout
and condition of the city at that time. The Kremlin , with its wooden walls and
towers erected between 1491 and 1536 on the ancient earth ramparts of the Middle
Town, formed the centre of the city. It is significant that eight out of the fourteen
towers were situated along the southern wall, not because they were necessary
from a military point of view, but due to the concern of the builders for the
cities southern aspect. The Patriarch's Gardens were also here on the southern
slopes of the hill. The area north of the Cathedral consisted of a considerable
number of fortified buildings and residences, including the particularly impressive
residence of the military governor (voyevoda). To the north of the main street
(Bolshaya Ulitsa) there was a densely populated area intersected by a network
of twisting alleys. The pond by the Tainitsky Tower in the north of the Kremlin
, which was used to store water in case of siege, is still there. Near the western
Trading Gates there was a prison surrounded by a stockade of sharp stakes. The
western section of the city was the trading quarter; here the market square with
its rows of stalls and workshops adjoined the north side of the main street which
was the only street in the city to be paved with planks of oak. The other streets
were simply like muddy country roads. The buildings outside the Golden Gate looked
just like a village, and the houses on the opposite bank of the Lybed and in the
eastern part of the city had also grown up in a similar higgledy-piggledy fashion.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the cities population was a mere 1,840.
Its old buildings suffered considerably in the eighteenth century: the wooden
walls of the Kremlin were knocked down and the earth ramparts began to collapse;
the stone Churches of Our Saviour and Saint George, which had been damaged in
the fire of 1778, were demolished and replaced by new ones; and the upper section
of the Golden Gate was rebuilt. The Vladimir namestnichestvo was set up in 1778,
an administrative unit which later became the Vladimir gubernia in 1796 with the
city of Vladimir as its centre. Under Catherine the Great many of the old Russian
cities were redesigned on a more symmetrical basis. The new plans for Vladimir,
however, did not alter the cities original layout as much as might have been feared.
For example, the remains of the twelfth century ramparts were preserved as well
as the old main street. A network of new quarters were built around the latter.
Moreover, the local architects managed to correct the worst errors contained in
the plans which had been drawn up by government officials in Saint Petersburg.
The proposal to erect two buildings for the Gostiny Dvor which would have obscured
the view of the Cathedrals of the Assumption and Saint Demetrios from the main
street was never put into effect. Unfortunately, however, the massive Provincial
Administration building was erected between the two Cathedrals in 1785, spoiling
the ancient beauty of the cities southern aspect with its barrack - like appearance.
A new centre for the provincial capital grew up in the old town centre. On the
east side was the governor's residence built in 1808. On the north side there
were two buildings in Russian classical style - the Noblemen's Club (Dvoryanskoye
Sobraniye) built on the corner in 1826, and the adjacent building, a boys' grammar
school and boarding school (1840) which had previously been the house of the merchant
Petrovsky. The highest focal point of the city was the new Cathedral bell tower
built in 1810 in place of the original tent-shaped one which had been struck by
lightning. On the north side of the main street a large area was taken up by an
arcade of trading booths (1787-1790) separating it from the market place, part
of which has survived to this day. Further on in the direction of the Golden Gate
was the portico of the Church of Saint Nicholas at the Golden Gate (1796 - no
longer extant) which seemed to reflect the porticos of the buildings on the central
square. Finally, round corner bastions were added to the Golden Gate. The subsequent
industrial development of Russia had little effect on Vladimir which remained
a small city of petty government officials and the lower middle class. The city
fathers showed little concern for preserving what remained of their beautiful
old town. One of them, a merchant by the name of Nikitin, produced a barbaric
plan for turning the Golden Gate into a water-tower. Luckily no one dared to go
this far, but one of the cities most attractive spots, Kozlov Val, was spoiled
by the addition of a new tower. The cities main street was lined with large apartment
houses containing trading premises, whose back yards opened out onto the picturesque
southern slopes of the city, which were dotted with small houses belonging to
the middle class. In 1861 the railway from Moscow to Nizhniy Novgorod appeared
at the foot of the southern slopes ruining the beautiful view once and for all.
XX
century
Please,
see the region history guide. | |