Tobolsk Kremlin Viewing Platform

The viewing platform runs along the edge of the former Voivode's Court—the administrative part of old Tobolsk. In the seventeenth century, the fortified city ended here. Beyond the wall, a steep slope began; the posad lay below, while inside stood the voivode's house and Prikaz Chambers—offices from which the vast Siberian Razryad was governed.

In the spring of sixteen seventy-six, Pyotr Vasilyevich Sheremetev arrived here—a boyar appointed voivode of Tobolsk, meaning the tsar's chief administrator and commander of the garrison. This appointment was arranged by his Moscow rivals, relatives of the young Tsar Fyodor: they wanted to remove the influential boyar from court. Sheremetev had to move his family to Siberia and spend almost two months traveling by winter road. He was expected to serve for two years and hand over Siberia's chief city in good order to his successor.

On May twenty-ninth, sixteen seventy-seven, church tent roofs caught fire during a thunderstorm. The fire reached the fortified city. The boyar's house, two Prikaz Chambers, the cathedral, the buildings of the bishop's court, three streets, and the posad wall with its towers burned down. Where the present-day walking promenade now runs, only the charred boundary of the city remained.

Sheremetev did not wait for money and craftsmen from Moscow alone. He brought every city subordinate to Tobolsk into the rebuilding effort and sent local voivodes an assessment stating how much money each was to collect. The entire razryad had to pay to bring the Siberian capital back to life. The wooden Kremlin and palisade were rebuilt, and in the spring of the following year Sheremetev handed the city seal and state weapons to a temporary successor and left for Moscow. His two-year removal from court ended with his return.

The fortress built under him did not stand for long. On August seventh, sixteen eighty, another fire destroyed the wooden city along with the Prikaz Chamber and the fortifications. After two such reconstructions in succession, the decision to replace wood with stone could no longer be postponed.

Traces of the old enclosures were found right on the viewing platform. During its improvement, archaeologists dug a test pit at the base of the southwestern square tower and found fifteen logs from the western wall of the stockade, set tightly against one another. They cannot be linked specifically to Sheremetev's construction: the wooden fortifications here were replaced several times. Nothing of this palisade remains above ground. The metal railing of the viewing platform runs where the wooden edge of the city once stood.