The fortress city on the Moskva river that rose under Mongol overlordship to gather the Russian lands around its Kremlin, claimed for itself the title of a third Rome and last seat of Orthodox Christianity, burned to deny Napoleon his victory, and became the capital of the Soviet Union and the command center of its terror.
In 1812, after Moscow was evacuated and Napoleon entered it, fires consumed much of the city — whether by Russian scorched-earth design, arson, or accident is still debated — and the ruin helped doom one of the largest armies Europe had seen. That act captures what Moscow has always been: a fortress city that defines itself by what it refuses to surrender. It rose from a wooden stockade under Mongol rule, crowned itself the heir of fallen Rome and Constantinople, and in the twentieth century made its ancient citadel, the Kremlin, the seat of a revolution and the office from which Stalin's terror was administered. It remains the center of Russian power.