Bilhorod Kyivskyi

Bilhorod Kyivskyi, also written Belgorod in Russian, was a fortified city and castle of Kievan Rus on the right bank of the Irpin River. It was established in 991 when Vladimir I of Kiev built a castle there, on the road that linked Kyiv with Zhytomyr and Halych, and it was meant both to strengthen Kyiv's hold over the Drevlian lands and to guard the capital against nomads from the steppe. The city withstood a long siege by the Pechenegs in 997, an episode in which its residents held a veche, the first such assembly recorded in the Kievan chronicles. It became a bishop's seat in the eleventh century and, in the twelfth, the usual seat of the heir to the grand prince of Kiev, reaching its greatest prosperity under Rurik Rostislavich. After the Mongol invasion and the destruction of Kyiv in 1240 the city ceased to exist. Its ruins, a hill-fort site of about 110 hectares near the village of Bilohorodka in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, are an important and largely unexcavated archaeological site.