Prince Yuri Dolgurovky first founded Moscow in 1147, and within ten years, the other walls of the Kremlin were completed, and the city had started to grow.
In the mid 13th century, the Tartar Hordes led by Genghis Kahn's grandson sacked the city, and the so called Golden Horde set up their capital at Saray on the Southern Volga, and ruled a large country, which included Moscow.
By the 15th century, Ivan the Great had expanded Russia and forced out the Golden Horde as far as the Urals and this expansion was continued by Ivan the Terrible, who conquered Siberia, and the whole Volga region in the south.
In 1613, the Poles who had occupied Moscow for 7 years were expelled, and Mikhail Romanov was installed as Tsar at the grand old age of 16, beginning an imperial line that would last over 300 years.
Peter the Great moved the capital to St Petersburg in 1712, in order to be closer to the rest of Europe, and hilariously put a tax on beards to discourage people from wearing them.
A century later, Napoleon invaded Russia, and found Moscow deserted, but neither he, nor his soldiers could face the cold winter, and they left quickly, and the population who had left returned to a city which was in ruins.
After the revolution in 1917, Moscow was reinstated as the capital, and began a period of growth pushed forward by the Communist centralisation of power, and took on most of its modern identity.
After the country hosted the Summer Olympic games in 1980, increasing openness and reform were spearheaded by Mikhail Gorbachev, leading to the 1991 coup, and the subsequent break up of the Soviet Union.
Changes since the end of Communism have been rapid, and not always welcome, with organised crime and the threat of civil war always on the horizon, although modern Moscow has become a flagship for the new Russia, and a place where fortunes are made by the ambitious, while the poverty created by collapse remains around them.
