Keywords: 4H-3,1-benzoxazin-4-one, 4-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxamides, active methylene compounds.Under the action of active methylene compounds (acetoacetic, cyanoacetic, or malonic esters) in dry pyridine 2-substituted 4H-3,1-benzoxazin-4-ones (acylanthranils) usually recyclize into 2-R-4-oxo-3,4-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxylates [2]. Occasionally the reaction stops at the acyclic esters of 3-(2-acylaminophenyl)-3-oxopropionic acid [3].Proceeding from this, it seemed of interest to study the behavior of 2-ethoxycarbonylmethyl-4H-3,1-benzoxazin-4-one (1) under the described reaction conditions. Interest in such a family of investigations is caused, primarily, by the fact that the given acylanthranil itself contains an active methylene group, affording the possibility of the occurrence of more profound, occasionally unexpected, heterocyclizations [4][5][6][7].With the highly nucleophilic carbanion generated from malononitrile, benzoxazinone 1 reacts similarly with isatoic anhydride [8], i.e. the acylmalononitrile 2 formed initially is cyclized into the aminoquinolone 3. However, to isolate it was unsuccessful since under the conditions of the synthesis, boiling pyridine, the amino group is subject to intramolcular acylation with the formation of 1-hydroxy-3,6-dioxo-4,6-dihydro-3H-pyrimido[1,2-a]quinoline-5-carbonitrile (4).A completely different picture is observed on using acetoacetic, cyanoacetic, and malonic esters. In the first two cases the reaction products unexpectedly proved to be 2-ethoxycarbonyl-(5) and the 2-carboxy-(6) anilides of 1H-4-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxylic acid, and in the latter case the N,N'-di-2-carboxyanilide of malonic acid (7). The structures of the obtained compounds were confirmed by 1 H NMR and mass spectra, and also by a contrary synthesis, by amidation of 1H-3-ethoxycarbonyl-4-hydroxy-2-oxoquinoline (8) with ethyl anthranilate and anthranilic acid respectively or thermolysis of ethyl ester of 2-carboxymalonanilic acid (9).