Grenade Yard (Moscow)

 interesting place, 17th century construction

The Grenade yard was the location of workshops that produced artillery shells.

An earlier Grenade Yard was located on Romanov Pereulok but when an explosion occurred at that location, the new Grenade yard was built here outside the Bely Gorod Walls.

The Grenade yard at Nikitsky Gate was constructed in Moscow in the mid to late 17th century to produce munitions for the war with Poland. It produced grenades or explosive artillery shells, which consisted of a nucleus that was stuffed with gunpowder. It was also a powder magazine and main repository of artillery ammunition.

At the beginning of the 18th century, in 1712 Grenade yard burned down when some of the munitions stored in the basement exploded. After that the Grenade Yard was transferred to the prairie Vasilevsky, and later to Simonov monastery. In its place, Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich put a hospital at this location.

For almost two centuries it was assumed that nothing was left from the original Grenade yard, but in the 1970s restoration work revealed some structures dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. The building was restored in the 1990s. The porch is the original, one of the few pre Peter the Great constructions to have survived until this time. (St. Spiridonovka 3 / 5).