First mention of Moscow

In the winter of 1146–1147 Yuri Dolgoruky, son of Vladimir Monomakh, and Sviatoslav Olgovich of the Chernihiv princes were allies against Iziaslav Mstislavich, grand prince of Kyiv. Yuri raided the Novgorod land, taking Novy Torg (Torzhok) and the whole valley of the Msta, and at his bidding Sviatoslav attacked the Smolensk land and captured the Golyad, a Baltic people on the upper Protva. Then, the Hypatian Chronicle says, Yuri sent to him: ‘Come to me, brother, to Moscow.’

Sviatoslav came with his son Oleg and a small retinue, bringing along Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich; Oleg rode ahead and presented Yuri with a pardus, a leopard or cheetah. The princes embraced warmly on Friday, on the eve of the Akathist Saturday of the Mother of God — in 1147, when Easter fell on 20 April, that Saturday was 5 April — and the next day Yuri ordered a ‘mighty feast’, honoured his guests and gave them many gifts. The chronicle’s year 6655 began in March here: its preceding entry puts the death of Yuri’s son Ivan on Monday, 24 February, in the week before Lent, which fits 1147.

The settlement on Borovitsky Hill is older: archaeologists have found traces of a fortified settlement of the 11th century and a timber pavement dated by tree rings to the 1080s–1090s. A later tale, retold by V. N. Tatishchev, says that Yuri executed the boyar Kuchka and took his villages on this site — a story many historians consider unreliable. Under 1156 the Tver Chronicle, known from 17th-century copies, records that Yuri founded the town of Moscow at the mouth of the Neglinnaya, above the Yauza, that is, surrounded it with wooden walls.