Kamenetsk-Podolskiy is an ancient city by the River Smotrych, - an estuary of the Dniester. It has long attracted archaeologists, historians, literati, and filmmakers. Archaeological data make it possible to assume that the territory of Kamenetsk-Podolskiy was inhabited by Eastern Slavic tribes in the early centuries AD. Scholars believes that an early feudal town had emerged in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, based on these settlements. It is mentioned in Armenian annals dating from 1060-62. The history of Kamenetsk-Podolskiy followed a long and winding path, at times marked by tragic events. Kamyanets was part of the Halych-Volyn Principality and in the mid-thirteenth century it suffered from the Mongol-Tatar Horde. In the fourteenth century, Kamenetsk-Podolskiy and the rest of Podillia were annexed by Lithuanian princes. After the sixteenth-century Livonian War with Muscovy, the city went to Poland under the 1569 Union of Lublin. In 1563, Kamyanets received the honorable status of a royal city and became the center of Poland’s wojew?dstwo (province) of Podillia, but in 1672 Podillia was seized by the Turks who would stay there for 27 years. If you walk down Kamenetsk-Podolskiy, you will see the Pidzamche suburb by the steep rocky canyon in the Smotrych basin, to the left of the Castle Bridge linking the Old Castle to the city. It is an area in front of the castle, the fortress, and the road of Karvasary. Legend has it that Karvasary had been the route plied by foreign merchants headed for the Armenian, Ukrainian, and Polish markets. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Church of the Exaltation of the Cross is another historical site, an excellent example of wooden architecture. The church and its belfry with a tall hipped roof represent the style of Old Rus.