New materials regarding research in the fields of architecture and urban construction are being presented. The authors also focus on the history of the creation of little-known buildings of interest, on the development of local architectural traditions, on new attributions, and introduce recently discovered archive materials. A number of papers are dedicated to the issues of architectural and urban planning development of historical towns and cities or study the formation of architectural ensembles. The edition also includes papers that are devoted to theoretical historical-architectural problems, to biographies of architects, or analyze artistic approaches and concepts.
Issue 59 (2013)
V. V. Sedov.
White Town in Yuryevets
The paper studies a little-known early Russian 17th-century fortress: the so-called White Town in Yuryevets (Yuryevets-Povolski). The author begins his research with analyzing written, graphic and on-location sources regarding the architecture of this half-disappeared stronghold. Erected in the 1660s this fortress demonstrates a combined type, evident since the time of its foundation: on the one hand, a fortress, a practically new town, so it has earth walls with curtains and bastions; on the other – constructed in accordance with all the rules of Russian defensive art, a stone (brick) fortress with toothed walls, faceted and square (in plan) towers and massive gate constructions. The fortress was almost finished, but for some reason, possibly of a general political character, the construction had been stopped and was never again continued. The erection of this fortress in 1661 indicated a turn to bastion fortifications and marked the abandoning of the scheme of stone walls and towers in Russia.
Keywords
Early Russian fortifications, late Middle Ages, Western influence, stone fortress, bastion system, foreign masters.