Tsarev-Borisov Town: A Fortified Russian Royal Residence and Stronghold
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Russia
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Iron Age, Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Russian
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fort
On this page13 sections
History
Tsarev-Borisov town is a late-sixteenth-century fortified settlement in Russia, at Borisovo on the high left bank of the Protva River. Founded by Boris Fyodorovich Godunov between 1598 and 1600, it formed part of a royal-residence complex associated with the newly established Godunov ruling house. The site also preserves evidence of earlier occupation, including an Early Iron Age settlement and an Old Russian hillfort used from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries.
Before the Godunov foundation
The location was fortified long before the stone town was built. Archaeological work in 2009 revealed the defenses of the medieval hillfort. In 1491, Ivan III granted the village of Borisovo in Porotovskaya volost to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. During the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the lands along the Protva passed to the Godunov family.
The royal residence and stone fortress
In 1585–1586, Boris Godunov, then a boyar, ordered the construction of a monumental stone Church of Saints Boris and Gleb opposite the fortress hill. The church was intended to express the accession of the Godunov dynasty and became the starting point for a royal complex containing a palace and associated buildings. Wooden fortifications were already present at Borisov town when the church was built.
The church rose approximately 74 metres, or possibly as much as 80 metres including its cross. It was described as the tallest tent-roofed church in Russia. A tent-roofed church is crowned by a tall pyramidal or conical roof rather than a conventional dome. The church exceeded the 60-metre Ivan the Great Bell Tower until Boris Godunov enlarged that Moscow landmark to 81 metres in 1599–1600.
Between 1598 and 1600, Godunov founded the white-stone fortress known as Tsarev-Borisov town. Its position above the Protva gave the stronghold a commanding defensive setting. Historian I. I. Nikolaychenko interpreted the project as an “unrealized capital of the Russian state,” reflecting the scale of its royal and military ambitions.
Occupation during the Time of Troubles
The fortress was drawn into the Time of Troubles, a period of dynastic conflict, famine, civil war, and foreign intervention in Russia during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Ivan Bolotnikov, the leader of a major peasant and military uprising, seized the stronghold in 1606, after which it was recovered. Its defenses enabled it to withstand a siege in 1609.
In November 1617, Prince Vladislav renewed attacks while claiming the Russian throne. The fortress continued to resist operations directed toward Mozhaisk. In 1618, its commander was the voivode Konstantin Ivashkin. A voivode was a military and administrative commander in the Russian state. After receiving an order from Prince Dmitry Pozharsky to withdraw, Ivashkin’s soldiers burned the fortress, blew up the dam, and drained the lake. Intervention forces captured the stronghold in August 1618.
After Boris Godunov died and his son Fyodor II was murdered, the royal palace was abandoned. A wooden church at the royal court, dedicated to John the Baptist, was burned by Lithuanian forces. In 1619–1620, 105 Cossacks were settled near Mozhaisk at Borisov hillfort on former church land. They received house plots opposite the fortress’s rear gates, and disputes over the unsurveyed land became violent.
Repairs, decline, and later change
The fortress was probably repaired shortly before or soon after the Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667, following the neglect of the Time of Troubles. Its towers were roofed, an alarm bell was installed above the entrance gates, and the bridge across the moat was rebuilt in 1661. A late-seventeenth-century plan shows the fortress, a stone bell tower, the Cossack settlement with its wooden church, quarters for gunners and landless residents, and a swan house.
In the early eighteenth century, Tsarev-Borisov town lost its military importance, was abandoned again, and began to decay. Until 1731, it was administered by the Mozhaisk voivodeship office. It was then assigned to Vereya and returned to Mozhaisk in 1773. The Church of Saints Boris and Gleb collapsed and lost its cross in 1775. A new stone Church of the Resurrection of Christ was built in 1811.
In 1830, the remaining fortress ruins and the tent-roofed church were dismantled, and their white stone was reused in several buildings, including the administrative building within the Vereya kremlin. Trenches dug during the Great Patriotic War damaged archaeological remains. Tsarev-Borisov town is now a federal-level cultural heritage property of the peoples of the Russian Federation.
Remains
The surviving site occupies a hilltop platform above the left bank of the Protva. The fortress had an irregular oval plan about 90 metres across, with ravines and a deep moat forming part of its defenses. Today, the physical remains include the platform, a moat reaching about 2 metres in depth, fragments of white-stone foundations belonging to the walls and towers, and a small cemetery.
Stone fortress
Walls and defensive layout
An inventory from 1664 gives the fortress walls a length of 211.5 metres, or approximately 292.6 metres when the towers and gates are included. The moat had a circumference of about 330 metres. The walls incorporated a continuous arcade with loopholes for firing at their base. They measured between 12.8 and 8.6 metres high, with the lower figure applying on the side facing the settlement, and their lower sections were approximately 1.6 metres thick.
Towers and gates
Four towers and two gates formed the defensive enclosure. Their roofs were shaped like tents, and the walls were crowned with battlements resembling those of the Moscow Kremlin. The towers also provided barracks for the garrison. The surviving fabric consists of fragments of the original white-stone construction and foundations. The fortress is tentatively attributed to Fyodor Kon, who also created the Smolensk kremlin and Moscow’s White Town.
Royal court and surrounding landscape
Wooden enclosure and court buildings
A wooden fortified enclosure, or ostrog, stood against the eastern side of the stone fortress on an earthen rampart. An ostrog was a wooden fortification strengthened by an earthen bank. The enclosure contained the royal court, the Church of Saints Boris and Gleb, a separate belfry, and a wooden palace. The royal court and fortress were bordered in a semicircle by the settlement’s main street, where the Cossack community was established.
Dam and lake
Between 1600 and 1603, a dam was built to create a large lake connected with the royal residence. A stable yard, a swan yard, and a fruit garden were established as part of this landscape. The lake was drained in the seventeenth century, while most of the dam survives.
Church remains and historical plans
Late-eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century descriptions portray the Church of Saints Boris and Gleb as a deteriorated tower of Gothic workmanship with a copper-covered roof. Its height was considered comparable to that of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, and its architectural workmanship was praised as exceptionally fine. The structure was described as having no major cracks at that time, although its roof leaked and iron elements had been removed.
The oldest surviving plan of the site dates from the end of the seventeenth century. It shows the relationship between the stone fortress, the bell tower, the Cossack settlement, the wooden church, the quarters of gunners and landless residents, and the swan house. Together with the hilltop platform, moat, dam, and foundation fragments, the plan helps define the former arrangement of the fortified town and royal-residence complex.
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