Dmitrii Ivanov
Suvorov’s Fort
The fort is located on Mount Suvorov (height 257.0). It was built in 1899-1904. The
original name of the fort was “Fort No. IV.” On August 30, 1903 it was renamed in ”Suvorov’s
fort". Like many other forts, the port is located in the mountains. The mountainous landscape is
typical for Vladivostok, it makes the development of the city more difficult, but at the same time
played into the hands during the construction of the fortress.
Fig. 1 Location of the Fort
As you can see the fort has the shape of a pentagon in plan. Along the perimeter of the
fort, the structure is surrounded by a moat, carved into the rock with the help of explosives. As
you can the moat looks pretty deep comparing to the moats I’ve visited before. Usually, moats
were dug around fortresses, castles and other fortifications as part of a defensive system and were
often filled with water. They made it difficult to access the walls of the fortress. An important
property of a moat filled with water is the prevention of undermines. But I think due to the minus
degree during winters in Vladivostok, such technology was never used in any type of fortress.
Fig. 3 Moat
The First building you can notice when you come to the Fort is “Kofr”. Special type of
building that allows to protect all sides of the moat. As you can see the surface of the building has
a lot of cracks and in my opinion needs reconstructions. As you remember in my previous
presentation. I’v shown you another fort that also had Kofr, but there also was an underground
corridor to the Kofr. A distinctive feature and a constructive lack of this fort was the absence of
underground corridors. So, in the event of a combat alarm soldiers couldn't use an underground
corridor to move to “Kofr”.
Fig. 4 Kofr
One of the most important building of this fortress is a caponier. Caponier – is a facility for
flanking fire in two opposite directions, but semi-caponier can fire only in one direction. It was a
room covered with earth, set up inside a moat and armed with cannons, for shelling the enemy in
case of an assault. Caponiers of this type have been known since the 17th century.
There were 2 semi-caponiers in Suvorov’s Fort. One of them was connected to the barracks
and another one had an underground corridor that leads to barrack’s yard. The aim of the caponier
was to protect Pervorechenksy district, that’ve I shown with a red color.
Fig. 5 Pervorechenksy district
Fort has 2 barracks. Barracks are a group of military buildings where soldiers live and sleep.
In the center of the fort there is a shelter-barrack, connected to another barrack by underground
postern. Now it’s difficult to identify those structures. As they look very destroyed and most part
of the barrack is located underground.
The fort was designed for 675 soldiers, eight 9-pounder (107-mm) cannons, eight light
field (87-mm) and ten 57-mm rapid-firing caponier cannons. But due to the lack of 57-mm cannons,
some of them were removed with older type of cannons.
Next construction of the fortress is a barbette. Barbette – is a platform for placing machine
guns and cannons.
Sometimes the barbet can have an armored cylinder around the gun. It helps to protect he cannon,
but also it decreases the angle of fire.
But in this case I think there was no any armored cylinder as, I couldn’t identify any place
that looks like barbette. I think that this protection either did not survive to this day or it was not
originally built. Probably in this fort they used just a mound of earth that settled over time and did
not leave any marks.
I’ve shown on in the map 8 barbette locations. But today I could identify any specific area
that looks like barbette.
Fig. 6 The location of the barbette on the plan
And the last and smallest construction of Suvorov’s fortress, but still very important for
every fort is the gunpowder magazine.
Powder magazine – is very durable and protected structure for storing explosives and
ammunition.
The first things that caught my eye were the columns on the of the construction.
Unfortunately I could not find any information, about those columns. But in my opinion there
was some kind of the second floor with a roof. So columns were built to hold the roof, but over
time, the building was destroyed and only the columns remained.
Fig. 7 Gunpowder-magazine
As I’ve noticed during my research, most of the forts were built at the same time, but
their appearance has been preserved in different ways. Some of them still have a good
appearance, but in my opinion Suvorov’s fort looks more destroyed than forts I’ve visited before.
There can be many reasons for this, ranging from different construction areas to a limited budget
and the use of worse building materials.
Unfortunately, nowadays, the fort attracts only fans of dungeons and panoramic views.