st under a few years. Resultantly the monastery's cathedral was built up in 1506-1516, a building which remains, to this day, the oldest unchanged building in the city. By the middle of the sixteenth century a number of other building works had been completed in the monastery, also, other than this, for the first time in its history, Yaroslavl gained a stone-built wall with a number of large watch towers which were intended to be used to spot attackers from miles away. During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, when all the Russian principalities gave up their traditional rights and submitted to the Tsardom of Russia, the two large monasteries of Yaroslavl profited very much from rich gifts from the court of the Tsar, largely because Ivan IV made a number of pilgrimages to Yaroslavl over the course of his life.
New building works were also made affordable by a large upswing in Yaroslavl's economic fortunes which the city experienced in the middle part of the 16th century. The main reason for this largely unexpected improvement in Yaroslavl's fortunes came largely from the city's position on the Volga which allowed trade to be brought from and to Moscow via the river, linking the new Russian capital with the port of Archangelsk darstellte. Resultantly Yaroslavl became an important place for the conduct of international trade and a number of shipping berths and warehouses grew up around the city for the use of merchants, especially those from England and Germany.
Plan of the Spasso-Preobrazhensky monastery, Beginning of 17th century
The economic prosperity of Yaroslavl during the late 16th century was put to an end by the unsteady years of troubles which lasted from around 1598 until 1613. Like most Russian cities of the time, Yaroslavl was devastated by famine and became a potential target city for Polish-Lithuanian troops acting in their capacity as 'interventionists' in the troubled Russian state. The Polish-Lithuanian-supported pretender
