The article examines the results of multidisciplinary researches conducted on the territory of the city of Vologda within the borders of the fortress of Ivan the Terrible. The surrounding landscape was reconstructed, the features of the involvement of the territory in economic turnover and the change in the topography of the urban locus in connection with giving it a strongly pronounced administrative function are also studied. The time frames of the historical and geographical cross-section are limited by the end of the 15th - 17th centuries.