The Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin
At the same time all the community housing was taken out of its boundaries, and by the beginning of the XX century only administrative buildings remained in the Kremlin — the governor’s palace and public offices, a cathedral and three churches, the arsenal, a guardhouse and a cadet corps.
At the soviet times work on reconstruction of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin began. At the present it is mostly completed except for the destroyed section in that part of the Kremlin which is at the foot of the mountain the mountain. The walls and towers are rebuilt in their original size with battlements, gun slots, gates, sockets for latches, notches and holes for portcullis and lifting bridges. To provide conditions for preserving the Kremlin in the future Historical Architectural Reserve Museum was established in Nizhny Novgorod the base of which is the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin.
The first wooden-earthen fortress on the site of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin had a round shape in its layout and occupied a wide cape protected on both sides by steep slopes of the Volga and a ravine. Just like in other Russian fortresses of the Pre-Mongolian period, the base of fortifications was a strong earthwork and a wide deep ditch built from the field side. The height of the earthwork was no less than 12 meters; depths — 6-8 meters, while the width — 25 meters. The fortress occupied an area of 7-8 ha and had two centers — the cult one within the fortifications and that of the great prince — outside of them.
About the Kremlin of XIV century it is only known that a stone Dmitrovskaya Tower was built.
The Kremlin in XVI century had 13 towers in its full line of the walls and a 14th pentangular barbican joined to the Dmitrievskie gates by a stone arched bridge crossing the fortress ditch. The city builders were able to solve the most difficult problems related to erecting walls and towers on steep slopes and constructed a fortress measuring up to the highest achievements of the world fortification art. The construction had the walls and towers with a length of 2,045 meters and an area of 22.7 ha.
Along with the construction of the stone Kremlin, the Big (Old) Ostrog — a chain of wooden earthen fortifications for defense of growing suburbs was built. By 1512, they spread from the Oka bank to the Volga bank surrounding a territory of 314.6 ha; their length was 6.96 km.
The Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin was made of red big size brick and whitestone — freshwater limestone. The bricks were made on the spot, while the whitestone was mined down the Volga River.
The foundations of the walls around 2 meters by 0.7-0.8 meters deep are wider than the upper section of the walls. The average width of the fortress walls is — 4.5-5 meters, height — 9-10.5 meters. Their outward side is built with a little tilt towards the fortress (up to 80) from the foundation to the decorative round molding that stretches along the wall 1-2.5 meters lower than the area of the battle walkway. Above the molding the wall is vertical just as the entire inward side is, in which there are arch-like niches. The arches are separated by pylons up to 2.5 meters wide that served as the supports of the battle walkway.
Rectangular battlements of the walls are decorated with an ornament in the form of a swallow’s tale; that testifies about a sheer imitation of the Moscow Kremlin’s battlements.
One could get to the battle walkway only through the towers. A peculiarity of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin’s fortress walls was that the entire shooting was done from the upper battle walkway. Foot and middle gun-ports were missing. Only in five curtain walls (walls between towers) there was just one middle gun-port in each.
The total length of the Kremlin walls is 1,802 m. Curtain walls differ in their length from 200 to 40 m. This difference in the length of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin’s walls does not depend on the relief; therefore, it is hard to understand what caused the city builders to choose this location for the fortress towers.
The center of the defense of the upper part of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin was the Dmitrovskaya pass tower. The tower is first spoken about in the authorities in 1372-1374, and that is why it is considered to be the most ancient of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin towers. However, during the research in 1948-1952 no fragments of brickwork dating back to XIV century were found in it — the tower, it seems, was fully rebuilt in XVI century.
A long, around 29 meters, 8 meters wide, bridge led to the gates; it connected the tower with the near-bridge fortification. This bridge rested on vaulting supported by stone pillars. A barbican was located on a kind of a little island and was fully surrounded by a ditch — a side section of the main ditch. It was lower than the Dmitrovskaya tower and had only two levels. In the lower level there was a passway and battle chambers with gun holes.
The second level of the tower was formed by a battle platform protected by battlements. In the central part it had no flooring: those on the platform if need be were able to freely shoot throughout the entire passway from height.
There was no roof on the tower. A barbican had the shape of an irregular pentangular, its wide side turned to the Dmitrovskaya tower and its narrow point –– towards the field.
The Dmitrovskaya tower, to which Moscow and Kazan roads led, held the paramount place in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin. It alone had up to 70% of all the guns of the Kremlin. In 1896 the Dmitrovskaya Tower was remodeled into a museum; it obtained features very uncharacteristic to it: machicolations and a gallery covered with glass; its third and fourth levels lost their original form. Today’s Dmitrovskaya Tower is far from its original appearance and hardly resembles the menacing defensive construction it was in XVI-XVII centuries.
In the mountain-foot part of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin there is a rectangular Ivanovskaya Pass Tower, called so after a John the Forerunner church that used to be located nearby. The tower held a paramount place in the lower part of the Kremlin and, therefore, is different from the neighboring towers by size and measurements (the perimeter of the walls is 70 m), complicated construction and layered structure. The goal of the Ivanovskaya Tower was to cover by fire the territory of the commercial town and a boat station on the Volga. That is why an upper level was built above the main part of the tower; as the result, the tower was higher than the others, its height being 30 meters.
System of fire was deliberately planned. Fire capacity was increased by a round passway within the tower, double width of the battle walkway compared to the other towers, rows of additional gun-holes for middle-range combat as well as special machicolations that controlled entrance into the tower.