Near the village of Gorodishche in 1852, the researcher A. S. Uvarov discovered the remains of the ancient Russian settlement of Mstislavl, mentioned in the "List of Russian cities large and small"
It is believed that the city was founded by the son of Vladimir Monomakh, Mstislav. Further research conducted under the direction of P. A. Rappoport in 1956 and under the direction of M. E. Rodina in 1991 showed that the settlement was originally Meryan and arose around the 7th century. The first Slavs appeared here in the 10th-11th centuries. This city, practically wiped off the face of the earth during the Tatar raids and princely strife, is now known to us only because it was here, not far from its walls, that the Lipitskaya battle of the Vladimirites with the Novgorodians took place in 1216.
The settlement is a territory measuring 190x145 meters, surrounded by ramparts up to 5 meters high. The opening of the ramparts showed that they were created in the same way as the ancient ramparts of Vladimir - i.e. their base is a wooden structure made of logs, on which a layer of soil is poured. Among the finds made during the excavations are fragments of ancient Russian ceramics, fragments of glass bracelets, a bone comb and other things of Slavic culture, dated to the 12th-13th centuries. Traces of the presence of the Finno-Ugric population were found in earlier layers - these are mainly fragments of molded pottery of the Meryan type, dated to the 17th-11th centuries. To the north of the fortifications of the settlement in the Kostyunikha tract, local residents discovered human bones, iron arrowheads and a bronze cross during seasonal agricultural work, which indicates that a burial mound or ground burial ground was located in this place.