Bryansk (Брянск, brjansk) is a city and the administrative center of Bryansk Oblast, Russia, situated on the River Desna, southwest of Moscow. Population:
The location of the settlement was originally associated with navigable river-routes and was located in the area of the Chashin Kurgan, where the fortress walls were erected. For reasons that have not yet been clarified, the city changed its location and by the middle of the 12th century had established itself on the steep slopes of the right bank of the Desna on Pokrovskaya Hill (Покровская гора). The foundations of the future urban development of the city were laid even earlier, when around the city-fortress in the 17th century after the Time of Troubles of 1598-1613 on the coastal strip at the foot of the Bryansk fortress the posadskaya "Zatinnaya Sloboda" was upset, and on the upper plateau, between Verkhniy Sudok and White Kolodez - the "Streletskaya Sloboda".
Somewhat earlier behind the posad (the territory between the fortress and the Peter-Pavlovsky monastery), after the annexation of Bryansk to the Moscow state and the organization of the Yamskaya service in 1503, the Yamskaya Sloboda appeared. Zatinnaya Sloboda is located on the site of the ancient "Zhitny Gorod" - a fortified territory of food warehouses and salt storages. Later, the settlement gave way to a cannon yard, on the site of which the Arsenal was located in the 18th century.
The general plan of the city of Bryansk plan laid the foundations for the development of the city in a regular system designed to streamline the existing buildings for centuries, limit the spontaneous growth of the city, and create a new community center. In the drawing, the territory of the upper plateau was covered with a geometrical grid of quarters formed by streets going down to the Desna and perpendicular to them.
Three squares were "strung" on two of them: Sobornaya - on the coastal Moskovskaya street, Krasnaya gorodskaya - in the center of the plateau and Shchepnaya market - on the western border of the city (by the entrance to the present-day Dynamo stadium).