ZAPASNOY PALACE OF BORIS GODUNOV

In the early 1600s, Tsar Boris Godunov, anxious to reign and win the recognition of the people, started a large-scale stone construction in the Kremlin in order to "feed the people" in the years of hunger. In 1601-1603, large three-storey stone chambers, later called Zapasnoy (literally "reserve") Palace, were built in place of the wooden chambers of the sons of Ivan the Terrible.

The Zapasny Palace was the largest building in Russia at that time. Stone floors of the new palace, having household purposes, were probably built on the wooden residential mansion of Tsar Boris. Instead of them, the False Dmitry built a new wooden palace in 1605 for himself and the future Tsarina Marina Mnishek, which was distinguished by the luxury and grandeur of its European-style interior. After the death of the Impostor, Tsar Vasily Shuisky, elected by the boyars, not wishing to live in the rooms profaned by the pretender, ordered to dismantle them and erect new timber mansions for him and the Tsarina in the same place.

In 1623, Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich replaced the wooden chambers with an Upper Embankment Garden on the roof of the Zapasnoy Palace. There were fruit and ornamental trees, ponds and fountains, supplied with water from the pipeline system built in 1633 by Christopher Galloway. Under Catherine II, who planned the construction of a new Kremlin palace in the early 1770s, the Palace, along with other ancient buildings, was dismantled up to the podklet, which in its ruined form was preserved for a long time as a retaining wall at the foot of the hill.