Kursk () is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym rivers. The area around Kursk was the site of a turning point in the Soviet–German struggle during World War II and the site of the largest tank battle in history. Population: Geography Urban layout Kursk was originally built as a fortress city, on a hill dominating the plain. The settlement was surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs and rivers. From the west, the Kur river, from the south and east, the Tuskar river, and from the north, forest thickets approached it. By 1603, Kursk had become a large military, administrative and economic center of a vast territory in the south of the country. The new fortress was built under the leadership of the governor Ivan Polev and Nelyub Ogaryov. The Kursk fortress was given a particularly important role, since in these places the Crimean Tatars, who made regular raids on Russia, traditionally crossed the Seym river, and their main road, the Muravsky Trail, passed east of the city. In this regard, Kursk, despite not being part of the Belgorod Protection Line, became one of the most important fortresses in the southern region. The importance of the Kursk fortress is evident by the fact that in the first half of the 17th century it significantly surpassed other cities in southern Russia in terms of the number of people. In 1616 there were 1600 people in the Kursk garrison. By 1782, the buildings of Kursk were located on the heights of two hills and in the valley of the Kur River. On the banks of the river were meadows and pastures. The city streets that laid on the slopes of the hills had steep ascents and descents in many places, so that travel in the city was almost everywhere made uphill. The presence of six ravines that cut through the hill of the Nagornaya part significantly hampered the development of Kursk. Heavy rains sometimes eroded the soil of the hillsides and formed ditches and gullies. The plan of Kursk in 1782 was to be implemented in the conditions of the existing buildings of the city. In the 1880s Kursk was already a significant settlement. It housed 14 churches not including the churches of the Znamensky Monastery. Most of them were stone and built around the time period 1730–1786.