He constructed much of the old Moscow still visible; not a church or a monastery of earlier date but he rebuilt, extended, or improved. Outside the Kremlin, throughout the different zones of the town, beyond the last ramparts far away into the forests that skirted the suburbs, the marks of his work, churches, palaces and halls, testify to the immensity and riches of this Moscow of the Tsars; wherever one may go in or about the Moscow of to-day, that of the seventeenth century cannot be wholly escaped. CHAPTER VIII _The Kremlin_ "The Kremlin is our Sanctuary and our Fortress; the source of our strength and the treasury of our Holy Faith." VIAZEMSKI. Russians very rightly regard the Kremlin as their Holy of Holies. All that Moscow is to Russia, the Kremlin is to Moscow. Nowhere else are so many and diverse relics grouped in so small a space; no place of its size is so rich in historical associations. It contains what is best worth seeing in Russia, it is what is best worth knowing. The people know this; know that--as their poet Medich tersely expresses its value--"Here it is that the great Russian eagle raised its eyrie and spread its immense protecting wings over an enormous empire." To the antiquary, of beauty, to the tourist in search of distraction, the Kremlin is equally attractive. To see it to best advantage, all who visit Moscow for the first time should make the tour outside the walls before entering by any one of its five practicable gates; or, if the complete circuit--some two miles--cannot conveniently be made then, instead of entering by the nearest gate from the Kitai Gorod, let the hurried visitor at least drive across the Moskvoretski Bridge, along the quay on the south side of the river, and, returning by the Kammeny Most, make an entrance by either the Borovitski or the Troitski Gate.