Kashin

Kashin stood on the Kashinka River, with a hilltop kremlin protected by the river and deep ditches. It became part of the Moscow state in 1485, but its religious institutions remained central to local life. In 1650 Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich came with his family for the transfer of Princess Anna of Kashin's relics from the Dormition Cathedral to the Resurrection Cathedral. He made substantial gifts to churches and monasteries and ordered improvements to the town's fortifications, gates and bridges. The later eighteenth century brought another kind of rebuilding. A regular town plan was approved in 1777, and the coat of arms granted in 1780 displayed three mortars of white pigment, recalling a local manufacturing speciality. The combination of river defences, pilgrimage and civic rebuilding gave Kashin a distinct history within the towns of the Tver country.