The city is a dynamic metropolitan area, and major financial center.
There are large barracks in the neighbourhood, and the Metropolitan lunatic asylum is close to the town.
On the 16th of January 1547, he was crowned the first Russian tsar by the metropolitan of Moscow; on the 3rd of February in the same year he selected as his wife from among the virgins gathered from all parts of Russia for his inspection, Anastasia Zakharina-Koshkina, the scion of an ancient and noble family better known by its later name of Romanov.
During these interminable struggles of rival princes, Kiev, which had been so long the residence of the grand-prince and of the metropolitan, was repeatedly taken by storm and ruthlessly pillaged, and finally the whole valley of the Dnieper fell a prey to the marauding tribes of the steppe.
From the ecclesiastics Basil likewise insisted on unquestioning obedience, and he did not hesitate to depose by his own authority a metropolitan who was at that time the highest dignitary of the Russian Church.