The Tainitsky Garden

The Tainitsky Garden follows the line of the South side of the Kremlin Walls, overlooking the bank of the River. The upper part of the Garden, which borders Ivan Square, is also called Great Kremlin Square.
The Tainitsky Garden in the Moscow Kremlin got its name from the similarly-titled Kremlin tower, which is located in the centre of the Kremlin Walls which overlook the river. “Tainitsky” contains the Russian word “secret”, and if we delve back into history we find that the tower – not the garden! - got its name due to secret casements below it leading to an emergency exit in case of siege.
In the C13th and C14th there were still private houses built inside the Kremlin area, and this street, with houses and churches along it, leading to the Konstantino-Yeleninskaya Bastion, was called Velikaya, or Great street. It must have been along this very street that Prince Dmitry of the Don and his army rode out to meet the Mongolian Army in battle.
In the C14th century there was a Church of the Annunciation in the Tainitsky Garden, which had a Provisions Yard where emergency rations were stored. Here once stood the Church of Saint Constantine & Saint Yelena, first mentioned in records of the C14th. Stalin tore the church down in the 1930s. The place where the church formerly stood was used for children's New Year parties until the 1960s.
The fountain here in the Tainitsky Gardens is new, erected in 2008. In fact it was the first fountain in the Kremlin. Historical records suggest there were previously as many as four fountains in the Kremlin Gardens at different times – but no trace of the “living water”, as fountains were formerly called in Russia, has survived.
Recent archaeological digs in the Tainitsky Gardens have unveiled a great many finds so far. They uncovered remains of ancient slavonic log-cabins once built here, and numerous items of domestic life. The most remarkable discoveries, however, have been birch-bark parchment documents dating from the C14th. Russian scribes used sheaves of birch-bark for writing before paper was widely in use in Russia.
Due to the fact that the Lower Garden is always slightly warm, but oxygen didn't get into the soil, the conditions were perfect for preserving objects such as leather items and birch-bark documents. In fact birch-bark documents of this particular era are the kind which researchers most lack. Experts are able to decipher the content of the document, and assign a date and provenance to it.
Now let's look in more detail at one of these mysterious birch-bark documents unearthed in the Tainitsky Garden. It's a thin leaf of the inner bark of a birch tree, with handwriting on both sides in the Old Church Slavonic language – a medieval Slavic language which was a precursor of modern Russian. The document is an inventory of property owned by a certain Mr.Turabiev. The document also gives a list of people who were our Mr.Turabiev's creditors. This surname had only been known from the C16th onwards – the birch-bark sheaf shows it was already in use in the C14th. It's planned to continue the archaeological dig in the Tainitsky Garden. It's planned to display the 5000 items so far discovered in the Kremlin Museum Collections, once archivists have examined and catalogued them.
Borovitskaya Street is the longest in the Kremlin, and runs from Ivan Square to the gates of the Borovitskaya Tower. Both the Annunciation and Archangel Mikhail Cathedrals look onto it. The Grand Kremlin Palace is located along the street, and here we also find one of Russia's very oldest museums – The Kremlin Armoury Collection.
From the battlements of Borovitskaya Street there are magnificent hilltop views across the Moskva River below – you can watch the pleasure boats go by. Behind the trees in the distance you can see the dome of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
Borovitskaya Street is one of Moscow's oldest neighborhoods – so old that we have no written records of its early history. Until the C19th the street was little more than 100 yards long, and ran from the Borovitskaya Gate of the Kremlin to the Church Of John the Baptist In The Forest. As far as we know from C15th records, this church had been built in the C14th right on the spot where the trees were felled for building it. A stone church soon replaced the wooden one, but it was to last only 30 years. At the turn of the C16th Aleviz Fryazin, also known as Aloisio da Carezano, replaced the church with a larger one which lasted until the mid-C19th. Nearby this church at one time stood the Royal chambers of Grand-Prince Ivan Kalità, or Ivan The Moneybags, and Mitropolit Peter.