To secure Russia’s new southern frontier, Catherine the Great built a line of forts along the Caucasus mountain range. Kislovodsk was one of them, and the Fortress Museum is within the remaining walls of that 1803 fort. The museum traces the city’s history. Noteable Russian writers such as Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Lermontov were visitors to Kislovodsk, and the late dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born here.
