Preceded by Viking sites such as Timerevo from the 8th or 9th centuries, the city of Yaroslavl is said to have been founded in 1010 as an outpost of the Principality of Rostov Veliky, and was first mentioned in 1071 Capital of an independent Principality of Yaroslavl from 1218, it was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1463. In the 17th century, it was Russia's second largest city, and for a time (during the Polish occupation of Moscow in 1612), the country's de facto capital. Today, Yaroslavl is an important industrial center (petrochemical plant, tire manufacturing plant, diesel engines plant and many others] and lies at the intersection of several major highways, railways, and waterways.
Early Yaroslavl
The oldest settlement in the city is to be found on the left bank of the Volga River in front of the Strelka (a small cape at the confluence of the Volga and Kotorosl) and belongs to the 5th�3rd millennium BCE. In the 9th century the so-called Russian Khanate formed, near Yaroslavl, a large Scandinavian-Slavic settlement, known nowadays for a range of burial mounds, in Timerevo. When excavations were carried out a large number of artifacts including Scandinavian weapons with runic inscriptions, chess pieces and the largest collection of Arabian coins (treasure) in northern Europe, (the earliest were struck in the first Idrisid) were found. In Timerevo the fourth set of Scandinavian brooches ever found in Russia was discovered. Apparently, this "proto-Yaroslavl" was a major center for the Volga trade route. Soon after the founding of Yaroslavl, the settlement went into decline, probably in connection with the termination of the operation of the Volga trade route. Upstream of the Volga River, just outside the boundaries of the modern city, archaeologists have studied a large necropolis with a predominance of ordinary graves of the Finno-Ugric-type.
Foundation of the city
If taken by its date of first
