What is the oldest city in Russia?There is no exact answer to this question, there are versions. The most common of them, based on the first records in the chronicle, suggest that the oldest city in Russia is Derbent. There is a lot of controversy, but did Kievan Rus itself exist at the moment when the first settlements of Derbent were already built?
The Great Silk Road passed through Derbent.There were a lot of fierce battles for the possession of this important strategic object. Enemies stormed and destroyed the “narrow gate”. The heyday alternated with periods of decline. The city survived, and its well-preserved stone buildings can be seen in the State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve.
The oldest city of Russia.That is what Velikiy Novgorod is called. He is 1147 years old. In 862, it became the first capital of the Russian state. This city was not affected by the Tatar-Mongol invasion. Here was the center of the development of culture and painting, architecture and applied art. Nowadays the sights of Veliky Novgorod are part of the UNESCO world cultural heritage.
The oldest city in Russia, unfortunately, is notretained in the historical chronicle records of its existence. One can only guess what it was. There are a lot of cities and settlements that are more than 1000 years old in Russia. This is Staraya Ladoga, she is 1252, and Pskov is 1101, and Izborsk is 1147. The numbers are quite relative, no one will tell the exact date of the foundation. In those immemorial times, they were not yet able to write, literacy began to spread much later than these settlements were created.
The share of the ancient Russian cities fell a lottests. Many of them were destroyed and wiped out as a result of sieges and wars. Some cities were restored from scratch, and some of them disappeared into oblivion. There are no more cities Vshchizh, Verzhavsk, Zizhets, Usvyat. After them, there are only mentions in the annals and remnants of fortifications. Each of these cities, and a hundred more destroyed, can claim this title - the oldest city in Russia.
There are cities with a long history that have managedto persist. They showed their strong vitality, passed the tests of centuries, but as a result of repeated destructive wars they could not preserve the monuments of the ancient Russian past.
These cities include Medyn Kaluzhskayathe regions (1386) and Dorogobuzh of the Smolensk region (1238). The unit princes quarreled with each other, Baty's soldiers perpetrated arbitrariness, Polish-Lithuanian troops passed, soldiers of the great Napoleonic army, and Hitler's troops twice passed through them. military biography, historical traces in the cities almost no more.
The oldest cities in Russia were built on highbanks of the rivers. Each acquired its own, unique to him, appearance. But with all its uniqueness and diversity, the cities have a similar architectural silhouette, formed by churches with domes and bell towers.
And in the Middle Ages, all the ancient Russian cities had defensive fortifications. Research continues, perhaps historians will answer the question: "And what is the oldest city in Russia?"
In ancient Russia there was a high art of urban planning. The ancient monuments that have reached our time testify to this.