Set the kremlin on the high ground where two rivers meet, so that water guards two sides; wall it with towers at the corners and gates, dig a moat along the landward side, and put within it the cathedral, the prince’s palace and the metropolitan’s court.
Clear ground before the wall
Keep a broad strip before the kremlin wall free of houses and churches, so that fire in the wooden town cannot reach the fortress and defenders have an open field of fire; let the market be held on it.
After the great fire of 1493, the chronicles record, Ivan III ordered the houses and churches in a strip some 110 sazhens (roughly 230 metres) wide beyond the Kremlin wall to be cleared. The open ground, first known as the Pozhar (the burnt place), became Moscow’s market square, and in the seventeenth century was called Red Square. Other Russian towns kept similar open ground between fortress and posad.
Related rules
Lay the posad out in streets radiating from the market square, and give every household a fenced yard with its house, barn, bath-house and garden, so that houses stand apart among gardens rather than in rows.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Clear ground before the wall”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/kremlin-firebreak. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.