The fortress in what was to become Moscow was built on the orders of Grand Prince Yury Dolgoruky (1125-1157). Dolgoruky had the idea to start construction in 1156, but in 1157 he died in the capital, Kiev, and the task of building the “small wooden town” he had envisioned on Borovitsky Hill fell to his son Andrey Bogolyubsky, prince of Vladimir.

This wooden settlement, often called Yury Dolgoruky’s town by historians, was bigger than the Slavic settlement previously established on the site. It stretched from the spot where the Borovitsky Gates stand today to the site of the Great Kremlin Palace. On the south, it ran along the Moscow River, reaching the point where the Tainitskaya Tower now stands. In the west it was bordered by the Neglinnaya River and stretched from the modern day Borovitsky Gates to the Troitsky Gates. These two sides were joined by an eastern wall closing off the territory, including the whole of today’s Sobornaya Ploshchad. Yury Dolgoruky’s fortress was shaped like a triangle and was a third the size of the Kremlin today.

The site of the Great Kremlin Palace and the church of the Savior on Bor – the oldest of the Kremlin churches, which was demolished in the 1930s – were outside the walls of the first Moscow fortress, which was protected by a moat on the outside and an earthen wall with a palisade fence. That the church should have been outside the fortress was normal because, at that time, it was customary to build monasteries on the roads leading into settlements. Apparently, the gates leading into the settlement were next to the spot where the church stood.

The perimeter walls of Yury Dolgoruky’s fortress town stretched 700 meters in length.

At that time, Moscow was a border town in the Vladimir Principality. The Kremlin housed the prince’s court, living chambers, storehouses and so on, ancient churches and cemeteries, and was a border fortress designed, along with the fortress in Dmitrov, to protect the approaches to the Klyazma River from the direction of the Yakhroma and Moscow rivers.