The appearance of the medieval city with its fortified walls and towers, slender churches and luxurious palaces, with ancient architecture of houses, workshops and shops, with its narrow, crooked streets, cramped, noisy squares, with a river spanned here and there by picturesque bridges - this appearance is perceived by us from childhood as one of the images a bygone past, like an old fairy tale. But if you look closely, the real history of the city appears in all its concreteness, full of labor and struggle, joyful and tragic events. After all, not a single feature in the external appearance of the city did not arise without a direct or indirect connection with the development of the urban economy, political affairs, class struggle, and cultural life. That is why in every medieval city you can find features that are inherent, if not all, then many cities of the same era and similar historical fate, and at the same time find features that are characteristic of cities of a certain ethnicity, geographical and economic area; finally, find exceptional, atypical phenomena that distinguish this city from all other cities the world. This image of the city does not take shape immediately. It changes throughout the entire period of its existence, depending on the course of the historical process. The rise of Moscow - its transformation from an ordinary settlement of the Vyatichi Slavs into a capital city, first of a small and then of a Grand Duchy, into the capital of Russia-had deep roots both in the ethnic processes that were going on at that time - the formation of the Russian people, and in the economy-the development of agriculture, crafts and trade, and in the political history of for liberation from the Mongol-Tatar yoke 1 . As Moscow rallied other Russian lands around it to achieve this most important goal, as its importance grew, so did the appearance of the city. The beginning of the period under review was a difficult time for the Russian land, including Moscow. T ... Read more