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The Byzantine icon of the Virgin and Child known as the Vladimir Icon, painted c. 1131 CE in Constantinople. Restoration following fire damage means that only the faces are original. (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow).
Ancient settlement Kuntsevskoe
55° 43′ 11″ N
37° 26′ 26″ E
The Kuntsevo settlement is one of the oldest fortified settlements on the territory of Moscow. It is located on the western edge of the Kuntsevsky Park and occupies a high cape between two ravines. Earthen ramparts, ditches, terraces on the slopes have survived to this day. The early strata of the cultural layer (VI–V centuries BC–VII–VIII centuries AD) belong to the Dyakovo culture. During this period, there was a patriarchal settlement here. Excavations have uncovered the remains of residential and utility ground structures of a pillar structure, and a system of fortifications from the fence lines. Many finds characterize the economy and everyday life of pastoralists, hunters, early farmers and fishers. Found tools for casting non-ferrous metals, metal jewelry, products made of bone, clay, iron. In the XI–XIII centuries. Kuntsevo settlement was inhabited by Slavs-Vyatichi, engaged in arable farming and cattle breeding. Tools of labor, household and handicraft items, typical tribal ornaments were found.
In the XIII–XVI centuries. on the upper platform of the Kuntsevo settlement there was a wooden, then a stone church of the Intercession of the Mother of God, that on the Settlement. In the former's area of church cemetery, white stone carved gravestones, coins, metal crosses and icons were found here. The Moscow historian Ivan Yegorovich Zabelin, who visited the settlement in the 40s of the XX century, found a gravestone with the date: “Summer 7065, 1557 died…” Earlier slabs usually had only an ornament instead of a gravestone inscription. A settlement with a church on the territory of the Kuntsevo settlement was destroyed, probably during the Troubles in the early 17th century.
The place where the Kuntsevo settlement, since we considered it as a “pagan temple”, and several legends are associated with it. According to one of them, there was a church here, which without a trace went underground along with the cross – in one night. It depicts the Kuntsevo settlement in the painting by A.K. Savrasov “Autumn forest. Kuntsevo (Cursed Place)”, 1872. Until the twentieth century, the well-known “baba” (stone block), reminiscent of a human figure, remained a trace of pagan culture until the 20th century. Baba stood before in the middle of the peninsula in the hollow of an elm tree, then was transferred to the master's garden.
Dyakovskoe settlement
The administrative building, built in its place in the 1930s, stands on a strip foundation, so one can count on the excellent safety of the foundations and even the basements – in 1985, a completely whole crypt of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was already discovered. The territory of the upper Taynitsky garden is available for excavations, there may be another Dyakovskoe settlement, and the Fatyanovo burial ground, and the ancient entrance to the fortress, and the foundations of orders.
Moscow – one of the oldest European cities.
Moscow uniquely combines holy and damned disastrous and life-giving places. Famous traveler of the XIX century. Marquis Astolphe de Custine left fantastic memories of the Moscow Kremlin as a dwelling of ghosts:
“Wandering around the Kremlin, walking along Red Square, listening to the underground sounds emanating, as you dream, from the graves themselves, you believe in the supernatural.” Buried along the walls of the Moscow Kremlin are Stalin, Marshal of the Great Victory Zhukov, and many, many famous people of Russia, the Soviet Union and New Russia of the 21st century.
The history of the capital and Russia is closely intertwined with mysterious events and ominous omens, which continue to come true to this day.
In the distant time of the 8th century BC, at the beginning of the Iron Age, when people still had no idea who Jesus Christ was and when the scattered settlements under the leadership of Romulus first united into the city of Rome, in the place where Great Moscow now stands, the first large settlements appeared.
Probably, before that you firmly believed that only after a couple of millennia, Yuri Dolgoruky rode on a dashing horse to this land and founded a city here? So this is approximately the same truth as the fact that Columbus – before the Vikings – was the first to discover America.
On a high hill on the bank of the river, which is now called the Moskva River, in those ancient times, ancient settlers founded the first such settlement. The people that inhabited it, our contemporaries call Dyakovtsy, after the name of the village that existed here until recently, until it was demolished for new buildings. It is very difficult to say now how they called themselves, although scientists believe that it was the Mery tribe, that is, the Meryans. Unlike Ancient Rome, this people simply did not have a written language, and we can learn about it only from legends and the results of archaeological excavations.
An Etruscan bucchero vase. Second half of the 6th century BCE. (Pushkin Museum, Moscow)
The Dyakovites worshiped pagan gods, were engaged in subsistence farming and hunting for fur-bearing animals, whose fur they exchanged from the Scythians for the things they needed, defended themselves from the Mordovians and the Goths, they led the most ordinary life for the people of those times.
Although not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance. From word of mouth in legends and myths, few legends have come down to us, which indirectly or directly confirm the unusualness of these places.
Intrigued? But everything has its time, let's digress from historical data and set off ourselves in the footsteps of the ancient people. To do this, we need to take a week's supply of food, a tent, a gun to scare off bears and… leave it at home. It is better to just go out into the street, take a little metro and after a while find yourself in this place, just crossing the avenue through the underground passage.
Then you have to go what is called “vegetable gardens”. These gardens are not simple, it has cultivated the land on them since those days of the clergy. Well, what city, besides Moscow, can boast of relict vegetable gardens?
Going a little further to the bank of the Moskva River, we will see a rather large hill with steep slopes of clearly man-made nature. This place is called Devil's Town.
As I have already mentioned, the Dyakovites were pagans, and therefore among their customs there were such, by modern standards, savagery as human sacrifice. The bloody town was the very “place of execution” where these ceremonies took place. Much later, near to this dangerous place, a church was erected, which was also named rather strangely: the Temple of the Beheading of John the Baptist.
This temple is a symbol of a new state: the kingdom of Moscow. It turns out that this is not one, but “five in one” table-like temples, closely nestled against each other. The church was laid by “Ivan, the Terrible” in 1547 in memory of his wedding to the kingdom. The Dyakovsky temple served as an experimental model for the altar-temple – St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square.
There is an opinion that Ivan the Terrible hid his famous library (liberey) just somewhere in these lands. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, some especially zealous enthusiasts looked for her here. But the relevant structures immediately thwarted their attempts. Why this happened, history is silent.
You can see the temple even today – for this we need to move about 300 meters away from the Devil's town, and it will appear in front of you in its proud solitude on the top of the cape. From the same Devil's town a beautiful panorama of Moscow opens up. The top of the town has now been excavated by archaeologists, and it fences part of it off.
The hill of the Devil's Town is surrounded by a deep ravine, now called the Voice.