The obvious starting point for our tour of Suzdal's old buildings is the heart of the old town, the kremlin. We shall approach it by the road leading to the cathedral.

This road crosses the well-preserved moat on the east side of the old fortress, from 100 to 115 feet wide, and the earth ramparts. In the eighteenth century the ramparts were turned into a boulevard. Its green slopes covered with old trees reach a height of 55 feet from the bottom of the ditch and their total perimeter is 1,530 yards. The main entrance tower of the fortress, the wood­en Ilyinsky Gates, formerly stood on this spot adjoined by the wooden walls running along the top of the earth ramparts. This east side of the fortress originally looked out on to a flat plain or, as they used to say in the old days, the "assailable" side, and because of this it was particularly well fortified. The southwest Dmitriyevsky Gates led to the old Monastery of St. Dmitri across the river, and the southeast Nikolsky Gates to a bridge over the Kamenka.

On the right immediately behind the ramparts we see the small Church of the Assumption built after 1650 on the site of a former wooden church "in the prince's court­yard" and rebuilt in 1720. This somewhat modest but fine building was restored in 1958 by Alexei Varganov.

The ground on which we are now walking contains remains dating back to the very earliest period of the town's history. Excavations carried out on the left-hand side of the street have revealed dug-outs of the type mentioned earlier and dwellings that once stood above ground level, now all lying deep below the surface. They show signs of having been arranged in a certain order and probably lined the street leading to the kremlin square.

Today the kremlin consists of a number of old build­ings grouped round the Cathedral of the Nativity.