Defensive Walls of Tobolsk Kremlin: a Historical and Architectural Sketch

Abstract

The article was prepared in connection with the announcement of the year of Semyon Ulyanovich Remezov in the city of Tobolsk in 2021. Information has been collected on the history of the construction and rebuilding of the fortress walls and towers of the Tobolsk Kremlin, which rarely attracted the attention of researchers. A review of the history of the fence construction in the Sofia courtyard is carried out. Particular attention is paid to the stages of the construction of the Kremlin stone walls, the surviving elements of defensive architecture in them. The authors clarify some provisions from the classical works of V. I. Kochedamov, draw on new sources, including photographs from restoration work in the middle of the 20th century from the funds of the Tobolsk Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve. The results of a comparative architectural analysis of the Kremlin walls of Tobolsk with synchronous and previous monuments of Russian military architecture are presented in the article. It has been established that the walls of the Tobolsk Kremlin were more of a symbolic-decorative than a military char-acter. It was determined that they represented a symbiosis of the Moscow Kremlin architecture of the late 15th century with the architecture of the Smolensk fortress wall, 17th century monastery fences and, possibly, the fence of the Bishops' court in Rostov.