ANTIQUITIES OF THE KREMLIN HILL

The Moscow Kremlin is located on the Borovitsky Hill, on the left bank of the Moscow River, in the place where the Neglinnaya River meets the Moscow River. The modern  district of the Kremlin had been entirely covered with a forest in antiquity. The ancient name of the Kremlin hill «Borovitsky» (from the Russian «bor» — meaning forest)  might have been connected to it.

Archaeologists date the first data on the stay of a human being on the Borovitsky hill by the end of the IInd millennium B.C. The later history of the Borovitsky hill's settling has a long break. The following archaeologically investigated stage is dated by the VIIIth-IIIrd centuries B.C. The settlement on the Borovitsky hill might have already head fortifications. From the northeast as means of additional protection, two deep ravines were used. One ravine met the Neglinnaya to the north of the present Trinity Gate.

The other ravine cut the southern slope of the hill between the Peter's and the 2nd Nameless Tower of the present-day Kremlin. Both ravines were connected gradually with a gully, artificially profound with the first residents of the Kremlin mountain. One can get an idea of life and activity of people of that far epoch at the permanent exhibition «Treasures and antiquities of the Moscow Kremlin» on the lower ground floor of the Annunciation Cathedral.