Local authorities and archaeologists, however, believe that the town had existed as early as 985[13] as a fortified settlement on the right bank of the Desna River.

After the Mongols executed Prince Mikhail of Chernigov in 1246 and his capital was destroyed, his purported son Roman Mikhailovich moved his seat to Bryansk.

Grand Duke Algirdas of Lithuania acquired Bryansk through inheritance in 1356 and gave it to his son, Dmitry the Elder.

During the Time of Troubles the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth occupied the town in 1610, and it remained in Polish-Lithuanian hands as part of Smolensk Voivodeship until the Truce of Deulino in 1634.

In the 17th and 18th centuries the economy of Bryansk, which had become a regional trading center, was based on the Svenskaya fair (Russian: Свенская ярмарка), the largest in European Russia.

[14] In 1812 Napoleon's Grande Armée fought the Russians in Bryansk and in Oryol during the French invasion of Russia.

During World War II the German Wehrmacht captured Bryansk and encircled the Soviet 3rd,13th and 50th armies.

The town remained under Axis occupation from October 6, 1941 to September 17, 1943, with the city left heavily damaged by fighting.

For reasons that have not yet been clarified, the city changed its location and by the middle of the 12th century had established itself on the steep slopes of the right bank of the Desna on Pokrovskaya Hill (Russian: Покровская гора).

The foundations of the future urban development of the city were laid even earlier, when around the city-fortress in the 17th century after the Time of Troubles of 1598–1613 on the coastal strip at the foot of the Bryansk fortress the posadskaya "Zatinnaya Sloboda" was upset, and on the upper plateau, between Verkhniy Sudok and White Kolodez - the "Streletskaya Sloboda".

Zatinnaya Sloboda is located on the site of the ancient "Zhitny Gorod" - a fortified territory of food warehouses and salt storages.

In the drawing, the territory of the upper plateau was covered with a geometrical grid of quarters formed by streets going down to the Desna and perpendicular to them.

[21] Three squares were "strung" on two of them: Sobornaya - on the coastal Moskovskaya street, Krasnaya gorodskaya - in the center of the plateau and Shchepnaya market - on the western border of the city (by the entrance to the present-day Dynamo stadium).

[23] The first isographic depiction of the city is a 1857 panorama from the left bank of the Desna, painted in watercolor by self-taught artist Gabriel Vasilyevich Khludov, a draftsman of the Bryansk Arsenal.

The reports of the governor of 1629, and paintings from 1678, 1682, 1685, 1686 testify that the fortress on Pokrovskaya Hill was cut down, like in the old days, from oak logs and consisted of walls with towers.

The city - "oak, chopped, covered with planks" - included a system of blind and drive-through towers connected by walls, supplemented by embankments and a wooden "standing prison in one log".

[citation needed] The fortress had towers: Spasskaya, Arkhangelskaya, Bezymyannaya, Bushuevskaya, the first and second Voskresensky, Nikolskaya, Pyatnitskaya, Rukavnaya, Sudkovskaya, Prechistenskaya, Rozhdestvenskaya, Georgievskaya, Karachevskaya and Tainichnaya.

[8] Today's Bryansk is an important center for steel and machinery manufacturing, and is home to many large factories.