Is the Kremlin sinking?

In August 1989 a cave-in created a two and a half meter wide, three-and-a-half meter deep crater in the Kremlin, near the former Senate building. This was just the most recent in a long series of “sinkings” on Kremlin grounds, all of which testify to this historical structure’s geological instability.

The Poteshny Palace (near the Armoury) started sinking as early as in the seventeenth century. During the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1629-1676), the building sank one meter into the earth.

The Arsenal building has long been threatened with flooding. It stands in the northern corner of the Kremlin triangle, where numerous springs emptied into the Neglinka River before they were dammed in the nineteenth century by the foundations of the buildings.