Tales of old Moscow: Secrets of the 16th-century engraving

Every week, mos.ru and the Museum of Moscow describe one of the museum’s exhibits in their joint project History of Things. Tales about an old ragdoll, an Olympic lantern as well as a figurine of an apple seller have already been told. Today, it is time to speak about an engraving with a map of late 16^th century Moscow and its author.

The most ancient Moscow maps date back to the 16^th or early 17^th century and were drawn up by foreigners. The1577 Moscow plan is no exception: it was drawn up by Austrian diplomat Sigismund Herberstein. The 48x34 cm image is engraved on copper. It shows close buildings inside the fortress walls and the shapes of Sobornaya and Ivanovskaya squares between them. Two streets starting at Ivanovskaya Square are leading to Spasskiye (Frolovskiye back then) and Nikolskiye gates. The engraving also depicts the palace complex that was being built under Boris Godunov and completed at the beginning of the 17^th century.

Sigismund Herberstein put an image of the Kremlin in his book Notes about Moscovia. The Austrian diplomat visited Russia twice. In 1517, he was a mediator between Moscow and Lithuania, and in 1526, took part in the renewal of the 1522 five-year-long peace treaty with Lithuania. Herberstein stayed in Russia for almost nine months and managed to study it. He knew Slovenian, so he could talk to Russians without any interpreter and discovered Russia for Europeans who knew close to nothing about it at that time. The diplomat was stubborn and meticulous. He was sceptic about the authors of the few publications available about Russia that existed back then, because most of them had never been to Russia. Herberstein compared their data with his own observations and carefully studied the Russian sources. He liked to say that he never trusted one person’s words but only the matching information he got from several people. All these traits made it possible to create a comprehensive ethnographic description of Russia. Notes about Moscovia   describe trade, politics, history, religion and traditions of the country.

Moscow as seen by a foreigner

The book has descriptions of 16^th-century Moscow. When seen from far away, it looked very beautiful with its gardens and numerous churches. Several monasteries were adjacent to the city, which made it look larger. However, the impression changed when the observer came closer: the city was almost completely built out of wood; the streets were dirty and needed planks to walk along them easily. Only several places on the ground were paved. At the same time, many buildings had large gardens as well as courtyards.

According to Herberstein, the Kremlin overlooked the Moskva River on one side and the Neglinnaya on the other, which flowed from swamps and became a pond near the fortress, which provided water for the moats. There were numerous mills along the Neglinnaya. The fortress was very large: besides the tsar’s stone residence, it was the site of the Grand Prince’s brothers together with the metropolitan and other elite people.

At night Muscovites used to cross the streets with logs, and as soon as the darkness fell and lights were lit up inside the houses, guards were placed there. No one was supposed to walk around after the curfew. If someone violated this rule, he or she could be sent to prison. However, this restriction did not concern everybody. For example, if guards saw someone important in the street, they walked him or her home. Brawls at night were a common occurrence.

There were several bridges across the Moskva River. In winter, merchants set their tents up on the ice, and the trade inside the city almost died down. They were selling bread, hay, beef, wood and other things too.

Maps at the Museum of Moscow

The Museum of Moscow has a large collection of Moscow maps and layouts starting from the first famous ones to rare plans of the first half of the 20^th century. They show city development projects. These do not only show how the city changed: how it grew and developed and how its scale and structure changed, but also how its iconic image formed: from the most ancient abstract layouts showing separate buildings to modern maps with universal international language.