The Kremlin and Kitaygorod, along with the squares adjacent to them,
are the oldest districts of Moscow and home to the most famous monuments
of central Moscow, including the Kremlin and Red Square.
Kitaygorod and the Kremlin are bounded on the south side by a ring of
streets that includes Mohovaya Street, Okhotny Street, Teatralny Street,
Novaya Square, Staraya Square, and Kitaygorodsky Square, starting from
the Bolshoi Kameny Bridge across the river. It also includes the square
overlooking the ring, the outer part of which officially belongs to
other districts: Borovitskaya, Manezhnaya, Teatralnaya, Lubyanskaya,
Slavyanskaya, and others. Until recently, the area was completely
uninhabited; even the Kitaygorod Municipal District was once abolished
because it had zero population. Later, developers managed to break into
the block between Red Square and Lubyanskaya Square and rebuild
something for elite housing, but to this day, Kitay-Gorod is primarily
an office district, with entire blocks devoted to ministries.
The
main attractions of the district are the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square.
These are listed on the World Heritage List. But for the traveler,
Kitaygorod is by no means limited to just that. The Zaryadye district,
south of Varvarka Street, is lined with churches dating from the 16th to
18th centuries; although a significant portion was demolished in the
1950s, what remains is a first-rate ensemble of ancient Russian
architecture, badly marred by the construction site behind it. Along
Nikolskaya Street and in the square are architectural monuments of
various periods, including Moscow's most famous classicist buildings,
such as the Bolshoi Theater, the Manege, and the Pashkov House, as well
as the Metropole Hotel, an outstanding monument of Art Nouveau. There
are also unexpected discoveries, such as a gas station and car wash 200
meters from Red Square.
There are a lot of interesting things in the Kremlin and its immediate surroundings. Together with museums, you can devote several days to this area. If you have little time, look around the Kremlin (and, if possible, of course, inside, and not just outside), then walk along Varvarka, where there are many old churches, and return to the Kremlin, skirting Kitai-Gorod from the north: this is how you will see Lubyanka , Bolshoi Theatre, Manezhnaya Square, Pashkov House - a whole range of traditional Moscow sights. Red Square with St. Basil's Cathedral will also be on your way, and it does not need advertising.
1
Moscow Kremlin. ☎ +7 (495)
697-03-49. 10:00–17:00 except Thu, in summer until 18:00. The most
famous symbol of Moscow and historically its center. The Kremlin is the
residence of the President of Russia, so most of the territory is closed
to the public, but the most interesting - Cathedral Square and museums -
are open to the public. The Kremlin is surrounded by a wall with 20
towers. The best views of it are across the Moscow River from Sofiyskaya
Embankment or from Bolshoy Kamenny and Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridges.
The entrance to the Kremlin for the public is only through the Kutafya
Tower from Manezhnaya Street, there are also ticket offices that open at
9:30. Exit - either back through the Kutafya Tower, or to Red Square
through the side door next to the Spassky Gates. There is a free
left-luggage office next to the cash desks, where you need to take large
things. Those who go to the Diamond Fund and the Armory are let through
the Borovitskaya Tower. Usually you can go further from there, to the
Cathedral Square, but this is in a sense an unofficial entrance.
You
can’t just get into the Kremlin, you need to buy a ticket, which costs
500 rubles. With this ticket, you can see all the cathedrals and the
Patriarchal Palace, as well as walk around the territory in the part
that is open to visitors. Tickets to the Armory do not mean anything
other than the museum itself. If you want to go deep into the territory
of the Kremlin, you will have to buy the same single ticket. Tickets can
be purchased online. In summer and on weekends, get ready for queues, it
is better to come to the opening of the box office or focus on the
afternoon, when there are fewer tourists.
2
Cathedral of the
Assumption (Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary in the Kremlin) (on the northwestern side of Cathedral
Square). The white-stone temple is located on the Cathedral Square. This
is the compositional center of the Kremlin and the largest of the three
Kremlin cathedrals. It was built in 1479 by the Italian architect
Aristotle Fioravanti and thus is the oldest surviving building in
Moscow. The Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir served as a model for the
cathedral. The Assumption Cathedral was the cathedral of Moscow (and
before Peter - the entire Muscovite state): in particular, all the
Moscow tsars were crowned here, starting with Ivan the Terrible. Moscow
metropolitans were buried in the cathedral, and after the introduction
of the patriarchate, patriarchs. The cathedral has the status of a
museum, although on some special occasions services are held in it.
Frescoes of 1642-1643 have been preserved. and a huge (69 icons)
iconostasis of 1653-1654. The frescoes were made by a team of icon
painters under the command of Ivan Paisein, later recorded and cleaned,
but not yet completely. The main four-tiered iconostasis was made on
behalf of Patriarch Nikon by a large number of icon painters brought to
Moscow. Who was the coordinator of the work is unknown, presumably
Vasily Ilyin. In the lowest fifth tier of the iconostasis, in the local
row, there are the most ancient icons of the cathedral of the 11th-15th
centuries, many of which were taken from Novgorod, Vladimir and other
Russian cities. There are also ancient icons in two other iconostasis
near the southern and northern walls.
3
Cathedral of the
Annunciation (on the southwestern side of Cathedral Square. Entrance through
the eastern stairs). It was built in 1489 by Pskov craftsmen on the
white-stone basement of the cathedral at the end of the 14th century,
and then it was restored with significant changes in the middle of the
16th century after a fire. The cathedral is much smaller than the
neighboring Assumption Cathedral and is much more complex in
architecture. The Annunciation Cathedral actually served as the house
church of the Moscow prince, and its rector was the prince's confessor.
The murals were made in 1508 and are partially preserved. The most
important thing in the cathedral is the iconostasis, which remained from
the previous cathedral and became a model for the distribution of icons
for all later iconostases. Part of the icons of the festive row of the
iconostasis (the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, the Presentation
of Christ, the Baptism, the Resurrection of Lazarus, the Transfiguration
and the Entrance to Jerusalem) are attributed to Andrei Rublev, and in
any case were made by contemporaries of Andrei Rublev and Theophan the
Greek.
4
Cathedral of
Archangel (on the southeast side of Cathedral Square). The
cathedral was built in 1505-1508 under the direction of the Italian
architect Aleviz Novy. Of the three cathedrals, it contains the most
elements associated with the Italian Renaissance. Inside, the paintings
of 1652-66, made by the icon painters of the Armory Chamber (Fyodor
Zubov and others), have been preserved. The iconostasis contains icons
from 1679-1681 (except for a few older icons of the lower tier). The
icon of the Archangel Michael (to the right of the royal doors) was made
in 1399. The cathedral contains the burials of all Moscow princes and
tsars, from Ivan Kalita to Ivan V, including Dmitry Donskoy, Ivan III,
Ivan the Terrible and Alexei Mikhailovich.
5
Patriarch's Palace
and the Church of the Twelve Apostles (on the north side of the
Cathedral Square). The church and the adjoining three-story chambers
were built in 1653-1656 by Antip Konstantinov and Bazhen Ogurtsov. The
chambers were the residence of the Moscow patriarch, and the church was
the home church of the patriarchs. The first Moscow patriarch who lived
here was Nikon. On the first floor of the chambers there were utility
rooms, on the second floor there was, in fact, the patriarch, and on the
third there were representative rooms. Thus, the Holy Council met in the
Cross Chamber. Currently, the second floor houses an exposition about
Russian culture of the 17th century. The most interesting thing in the
church is the iconostasis of the late 17th - early 18th centuries, as
well as an exhibition of icons, among which are the works of Simon
Ushakov and Fyodor Zubov, two of the most famous Moscow masters of the
late 17th century.
6
Ivan the Great Bell
Tower (Church of John of the Ladder) (on the eastern side
of Cathedral Square). From May to September, visiting by sessions:
10:15, 11:30, 13:45, 15:00, 16:00. Tickets go on sale about an hour
before the start of the session, which is designed for a group of no
more than 10 people, so the chances of buying a ticket to the bell tower
on weekdays are much higher. 250 rub. The Church of St. John of the
Ladder was built on Cathedral Square in 1505-1508 by the Italian
architect Bon Fryazin on the site of the dismantled one. In 1505, Ivan
III died, and therefore the bell tower is known as the bell tower of
Ivan the Great. In the Russian architectural tradition, free-standing
bell towers were not built (belfries were built, sometimes separately,
sometimes integrated with the church), and the idea to build a separate
bell tower came from Italy. Until the construction of the Menshikov
Tower (the Church of the Archangel Gabriel) in 1701, the Ivan the Great
Bell Tower remained the tallest building in Moscow. In 1539, the
Nativity Church was added from the north to the bell tower, which turned
into a three-span belfry by the end of the 17th century. In 1600, by
order of Boris Godunov, the third tier of the bell tower was built on,
at the same time a church inscription appeared under the dome. In 1624,
Filaret's annex with a hip bell, erected by Bazhen Ogurtsov, appeared.
In 1812, the French blew up the entire complex, but the pillar of the
bell tower survived - it was saved by walls reaching five meters thick
at the base. Inside the bell tower there is an exposition on the history
of the Kremlin, including fragments of ancient white stone churches, a
commemorative plaque with an inscription about the construction of the
Frolovskaya (Spasskaya) tower and a bell. The tour involves climbing a
steep staircase to a mound located at a height of 25 meters, at the
level of the domes of the Kremlin cathedrals. It offers a view of the
Cathedral Square, the passage to the eastern half of the abyss is
closed. Photos and videos are allowed.
7
Church of the Deposition
of the Robe (between the Assumption Cathedral and the Palace of Facets).
The first Church of the Deposition of the Robe was built in the
Metropolitan's court in 1451 in memory of the deliverance of Moscow from
the invasion of the Tatars. In 1484-1485, a small stone church was
erected in the same place, which until the middle of the 17th century
served as the home church of metropolitans and patriarchs. The church
was built by Pskov masters, which can be seen both in its composition
and in the architectural decoration, which is a mixture of early Moscow
and Pskov traditions. All interior decoration - painting, iconostasis
and church utensils - belongs to the same period, to the 17th century.
The walls were painted in 1644 with frescoes depicting scenes from the
earthly life of the Mother of God and the Gospel. The iconostasis was
created in 1627 by an artel of icon painters headed by Nazariy Istomin,
and the royal doors belong to the end of the 16th century. Inside the
church there is a small exposition of unique monuments of wooden carving
of the 15th-19th centuries, made by the best carvers of Moscow,
Novgorod, Rostov the Great and the Russian North.
8
Tsar Cannon
(near the Patriarchal Palace). The cannon was cast in bronze by Andrey
Chokhov in 1586. This is the largest caliber gun in the world - 890 mm,
and its weight is 40 tons. Although it was cast to defend the Kremlin's
Spassky Gates, the cannon was never used in combat and never fired.
Decorative cannonballs stacked near the cannon were cast in the 19th
century and are not directly related to it.
9
Tsar Bell (next
to Ivan the Great Bell Tower). The bell weighing about 200 tons was cast
in 1733-1735 by Ivan Motorin and his son Mikhail. The bell is
significantly larger than all other known bells. In 1737, during the
processing of the bell after casting, a fire broke out, as a result of
which a large piece fell off the bell. Thus, the bell never worked as
intended, and until 1836 it lay in the casting pit at all, and no one
knew what to do with it. Then it was raised from the pit and, together
with the chipped piece, was placed on a pedestal built by the architect
Auguste Montferrand.
10 Great Kremlin Palace.
The ensemble of the Grand Kremlin Palace, located on the southern line
of the Kremlin Hill, includes a new palace of the 19th century and
several more ancient buildings of the 15th-17th centuries. The new front
palace with the main facade looking at the Kremlin embankment was built
in 1838-1849 under the direction of Konstantin Ton. Despite the three
rows of windows, the inside of the building has two floors, just located
on the top floor are magnificent double-height ceremonial halls. The
external decoration of the Grand Palace uses the motifs of the Terem
Palace (1635-1636), which was built into the complex during the works of
the 19th century. The Golden Tsaritsyna Chamber (XVI century) is also
part of the palace, with its eastern facade overlooking the Cathedral
Square next to the Rizopolozhenskaya Church. In 1636, the Verkhnespassky
Cathedral was erected above the Tsaritsyna Chamber - an eleven-domed
complex of house churches at the Terem Palace, often called the Terem
Churches. Now the Grand Kremlin Palace serves as the presidential
residence and is used for ceremonial functions. The Moscow Kremlin
website reports that "tours are conducted on request from
organizations," but no one knows how it works, or if it works at all.
You can try to get to one of the official events held in the palace or,
say, just become the president of the Russian Federation.
11 Faceted Palace.
The oldest civil building in Moscow, part of the architectural complex
of the Grand Kremlin Palace. It was built by the decree of Ivan III by
the Italians Marco Ruffo and Pietro Antonio Solari, and got its name for
the very spectacular design of the eastern facade with faceted “diamond”
rustication in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. At the end of the
17th century, the windows of the chamber were hewn and decorated with
white stone architraves with columns intertwined with vines. The main
hall of the chamber recently opened to the public is covered with high
cross vaults resting on a central tetrahedral pillar. The first painting
of the walls of the hall appeared at the end of the 16th century, but
due to repeated fires in the 1660s, it was resumed by Simon Ushakov, who
also compiled a detailed inventory of the plots and deciphered the
inscriptions. Under Peter I, the walls were whitewashed and covered with
crimson velvet with double-headed eagles, and the hall retained this
appearance until the end of the 19th century, when the painting was
restored in accordance with the description of S. Ushakov. Within the
walls of the chamber, which has long been the main front reception hall
of the Grand Duke's palace, many festivities and events that have gone
down in history took place.
12 Terem Palace.
The palace was built in 1635-1636 and is remarkable for its terem
completion. Not only is it inaccessible for visiting, but you can’t even
get close to it, since it is actually built into the Grand Kremlin
Palace. The Terem is visible from some points outside the Kremlin: for
example, from Mokhovaya Street.
13
Senate. The palace was built in
1776-1787 according to the design of Matvey Kazakov in the style of
classicism. The name is due to the fact that the palace was originally
built for two departments of the Governing Senate, which just before
that were transferred from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Subsequently, the
palace housed everything - for example, the Moscow Architectural School.
After 1917, the Soviet government was located here, and, in particular,
Lenin lived in the building. Until 1994, Lenin's office functioned as a
museum, and then it was closed and, together with all the furnishings,
moved to Gorki, where it is now. The palace became the residence of the
President of the Russian Federation, there is no access for visitors.
14 Amusement Palace. Another inaccessible and difficult to observe
object, visible in parts from the territory of the Kremlin, from the
Alexander Garden or from Borovitskaya Square. The amusing palace was
built in 1652 for the boyar I. D. Miloslavsky. At first, the building
served as residential chambers, but under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich it
was rebuilt and began to be used for theatrical performances and other
entertainment spectacles. Actually, hence the name of the palace. In the
upper tower-like tier of the building there is a three-domed house
church of the Praise of the Virgin, and the turret above the refectory
was once used both as a bell tower and as a watchtower. During the
restoration of 1874-1875, a balcony and a white-stone portal with carved
ornaments were added to the palace. Now it houses the services of the
Commandant's Office of the Moscow Kremlin.
15
Arsenal
(Tseuchgauz). The huge square-shaped building was originally built at
the beginning of the 18th century by a group of architects led by
Mikhail Choglokov and was used as a military warehouse. The Arsenal was
badly damaged in the fire of Moscow in 1737 and was restored only in
1786-1796 by Matvey Kazakov. Then in 1812, during the retreat, the
French blew up part of the building, but it was restored again. Now the
commandant's office of the Kremlin and the barracks of the Kremlin
regiment are located inside.
16 Tainitsky Garden (Big Kremlin
Square). Located along the southern wall of the Kremlin,
next to the Taynitskaya Tower, hence the name. In 2013, a helipad was
built in the park (without the consent of UNESCO).
According to the chroniclers, the first wooden fortifications around
the Moscow Kremlin appeared in the middle of the 12th century. They
covered an area much smaller than the territory of the current Kremlin,
and existed until the fire of 1331. They were replaced by the powerful
oak walls of Ivana Kalita, which stood from 1340 to 1367, after which
the grandson of Kalita, Dmitry Donskoy, built impressive white stone
fortifications from walls and towers instead, significantly increasing
the area of the fortress. This fortress faithfully served the city for
more than 100 years, forever went down in history under the stable
expression "Moscow white stone", but by the end of the 15th century it
had become significantly dilapidated.
The red brick wall, in
places including the white stone walls of the previous fortress, was
built in 1485-1516 by Italian architects, to whom the Kremlin owes some
elements of Renaissance architecture, and even direct borrowings. You
will find one of the Kremlin towers in the Sforza castle in Milan, while
the characteristic battlements of the Kremlin wall were copied from the
Castelvecchio castle in Verona. The wall completely encircles the
Kremlin and has the shape of an irregular triangle: one side of the
triangle is along the river, the other is along Red Square, the third is
along Mokhovaya Street and Alexander Garden. In ancient times, the
fortress also had water protection: the Kremlin Hill was washed by two
rivers - the Moscow and the Neglinnaya (in the first quarter of the 19th
century it was enclosed in a pipe), and a moat more than 30 meters wide
was dug from the side of Red Square. The thickness of the walls varies
from 3.5 to 6.5 meters, their height in some places reaches 19 meters.
There are 19 towers in the wall, the twentieth is the Kutafya tower,
which does not stand in a triangle, but is connected by a section of the
wall with the Trinity Tower. Three towers in the corners of the triangle
(Beklemishevskaya, Vodovzvodnaya and Angular Arsenalnaya) have a
circular section, Kutafya is oval, the rest are square. In the 17th
century, when the fortress was no longer used for its intended purpose,
the towers had graceful hipped tops. On five towers (Spasskaya,
Nikolskaya, Troitskaya, Borovitskaya and Vodovzvodnaya), red ruby stars
have been preserved from Soviet times. The most famous of the towers is
Spasskaya, as it overlooks Red Square and is located next to Lenin's
mausoleum. In addition, it has chimes that strike every quarter of an
hour. The Nikolskaya Tower is the only one built in the pseudo-Gothic
style.
Below - more about the most notable towers of the Kremlin,
starting from the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge counterclockwise.
Unfortunately, the walls and towers are completely closed to the public.
17 Beklemishevskaya Tower (Moskvoretskaya). Corner south-east tower
with a round section 46 meters high. It was built in 1488 according to
the project of Marco Ruffo (Mark Fryazin) at the junction of the Moskva
River with a moat that protected the wall from Red Square. By the way,
this is the only tower built by Mark Ruffo without the participation of
colleagues. The name of the tower comes from the name of the boyar I.N.
Beklemishev, whose yard was located nearby. Beklemishev was in power
during the time of Ivan III, but fell out of favor with his son Vasily
III and was executed in 1525. After the execution of the boyar, both the
yard and the tower became the traditional place where disgraced boyars
were kept. The tower was built to protect the crossing over the Moskva
River and has a number of military devices, including three tiers of
loopholes and a combat platform with machicols (mounted loopholes) in
the upper tier. The octagonal tent was added in 1680, but this is one of
the few major alterations that befell the tower.
18
Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower (Timofeevskaya). It was built in 1490 by
Pietro Antonio Solari on the site of the Timofeevsky Gates of the white
stone fortress. According to legend, it was through this gate that
Dmitry Donskoy went to the Battle of Kulikovo. The second name of the
tower appeared in the 17th century after the construction of the Church
of Constantine and Helena nearby, dismantled in 1928. The tower has a
square section and was intended to cover the entrances to the pier and
protect the streets of Veliky Posad. The inner part of the tower
consists of two tiers, the lower of which used to be a passage, and an
intra-wall staircase leads to the upper platform with machicolations.
19
Spasskaya Tower/ Spasskaya
Tower (Frolovskaya). The Frolovskaya tower with the same-named passage
gate - namely, that was their original name - was built in 1491 by
Pietro Antonio Solari. This was reported by commemorative inscriptions
in Latin and Russian, made on white stone slabs standing in front of the
entrance gate. A copy of the memorial plaque with the text in Latin can
now be seen above the Spassky Gates, the original plaque is now on
display in the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. The first name went to the
tower from the Frolovskaya archer of the white stone fortress, and it,
in turn, was named from the unpreserved church of Frol and Lavr on
Myasnitskaya Street, where the road led through the gate. In 1658, in
honor of the icon of the Savior of Smolensk, written above them from the
side of Red Square, the gates became Spassky. The tower also inherited
the same name. Being the main entrance to the Kremlin, the gate tower
has seen many historical events: coronations, religious processions and
the beginning of military campaigns. An elegant multi-tiered
superstructure appeared on the Spasskaya Tower in 1625, and in the
middle of the 17th century a two-headed eagle was hoisted on it, which
stayed there until the appearance of ruby stars in 1935. The clock on
the tower has existed since at least the 16th century, and already from
the 17th century it had bells and “played music”, but it often broke
down, and until the middle of the 18th century it was changed at least
four times. The modern clock with chimes, occupying the top three tiers
of the tower, was installed in 1852. During this time, they were
restored several times, their dial and mechanism were changed, and
besides, they were “trained” several times in different melodies - not
always successfully. Now the chimes every six hours, starting from
midnight, play a fragment of the country's anthem, and in the middle
between the anthem, a couple of musical phrases from Glinka's opera A
Life for the Tsar sound.
A little south of the Spasskaya Tower, on
the wall, there is a small turret, erected at the end of the 17th
century on the site of an ancient wooden tower from which, according to
legend, Tsar Ivan the Terrible watched Red Square. For this, she
received the name Tsarskaya.
20 Nikolskaya tower. This tower with
an elegant pseudo-Gothic top has a difficult fate. It appeared in 1491
and, like many others, was built by Pietro Antonio Solari. The tower
always had a passage gate, and in ancient times there was a drawbridge
across the moat in front of it. Its name comes either from the icon of
St. Nicholas of Mozhaisky hanging over the gate, or from the Nikolsky
Greek monastery, located on Nikolskaya Street, which rested directly
against the tower. After a fire in 1737, the tower was restored with
baroque decor, and at the very beginning of the 19th century it was
rebuilt in pseudo-Gothic style by architects A. I. Ruska and A. N.
Bakarev. In 1812, the tower was blown up by the French, but by 1819 it
was restored again, now according to the project of the architect O. I.
Bove with the participation of A. N. Bakarev. The appearance of the
tower was somewhat modified, adding a Gothic decor and painting it
white. And the tower received its modern look and color during
restoration after the shelling that fell on it in October 1917.
21
Trinity Tower. The
Trinity Tower, which was called the Epiphany in those days, was built in
1495-1499 by Aleviz the Old (Aloysio da Caresano). Having changed its
name several times, in 1658 the tower became Troitskaya, having received
this name from the nearby courtyard of the Trinity Monastery. In 1516, a
bridge across the Neglinka was built in front of the tower, connecting
it with the Kutafya Tower, and it is this bridge that now serves as the
main entrance to the Kremlin. In 1585, chimes were installed on the
tower, which stood until the fire of 1812. After the appearance of the
tented superstructure at the end of the 17th century, it became the
highest in the Kremlin; now its height, together with the star from the
side of the Alexander Garden, is about 80 meters.
22 Kutafya
tower. The only surviving bridge tower of the Kremlin was built in 1516
by Aleviz the Old at the same time as the bridge leading to the Trinity
Tower. He also built other towers and walls of the fortress from the
Neglinka side. Until the 17th century, the tower was surrounded on all
sides by water and served as a serious obstacle to the attackers. Once
the tower was covered with a vault, but in the 18th century it was
dismantled. The origin of the name is not completely clear and is
associated with one of two words: kut - corner, shelter and kutafya - a
full clumsy woman.
23 Borovitskaya tower. The Borovitskaya Tower
crowns the main Borovitsky Gates, through which government corteges and
visitors to the Armory enter the Kremlin. It was built by Pietro Antonio
Solari in 1490 on the site of the 1461 tower of the same name. The
ancient forest, which once covered these places, gave its name not only
to the tower, but also to several ancient churches standing nearby. The
Borovitskaya tower has an unusual pyramidal shape, formed by several
decreasing quadrangles, crowned with an octagon with a hipped top. This
entire superstructure was erected at the end of the 17th century instead
of the wooden tent that crowned the solari quadrangle. Pseudo-Gothic
decor appeared on the tower in the 18th century, but in the 19th century
it was practically destroyed and restored only during the restoration of
the 1970s.
24 Vodovzvodnaya tower (Sviblova). The corner tower
with a circular section before the construction of the hipped
superstructure of the 17th century was perhaps the most beautiful in the
Kremlin. The tower was built by Antonio Gilardi in 1488, one of the
first structures that protected the approaches from the Moskva River. A
lot of innovations were applied in the design of this tower: in Russian
fortress architecture arcature belts, machicols and dovetails were not
used before. The first name - Sviblova - was given to the tower by the
name of the owners of the courtyard adjoining it. In 1633, a
water-lifting machine by Christopher Galoway was installed in the tower,
which gave its modern name. This device, which became the first water
pipe in Moscow, supplied water to the Sytny and Kormovaya palaces, and
later to the Kremlin gardens. In 1812, the tower was blown up by the
French, but already in 1819 it was restored under the leadership of O.I.
Beauvais.
25 Taynitskaya tower. The construction of a new
fortress began on the south side, which was often attacked by enemies.
Here, in 1485, the first fortress tower appeared, built by Antonio
Gilardi (Anton Fryazin). So the Tainitskaya Tower is the oldest tower of
the Moscow Kremlin. A well was dug under it and a secret passage was
laid to the Moscow River, so that in the event of a siege, the defenders
would not be left without water - hence the name. Until the 18th
century, the tower had a passage gate with a retractable archer
(barbican) and a lifting mechanism, but during the construction of the
Grand Kremlin Palace, together with three neighboring towers, it was
dismantled and later restored with a gate, but without an archer. The
gate, however, was laid down in the 1930s, at the same time the well was
filled up.
The
Alexander Gardens
was laid out in 1820-1823 on the site of the Neglinnaya River, hidden in
a pipe. It was created according to the project of O. I. Bove and
initially consisted of three Kremlin gardens: the Upper one - between
the Corner Arsenal and Troitskaya towers, the Middle one - between the
Troitskaya and Borovitskaya towers and the Lower one - from the
Borovitskaya tower to the Kremlin embankment. After 1856, the gardens
were renamed Alexander Gardens in honor of the Emperor Alexander I, who
founded them, but over time the singular name stuck. The main sights of
the garden, including the magnificent cast-iron gate with eagles, made
according to the drawings of Eugene Pascal, are located in the former
Upper Garden. In the Middle Garden, almost at the Borovitskaya Tower,
several centuries-old oaks have been preserved, and the entrance to the
Lower Garden is generally closed to the general public.
26 Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier. The memorial ensemble near the walls of the
Kremlin was founded in December 1966 on the occasion of the 25th
anniversary of the defeat of German troops near Moscow. The opening of
the memorial, designed by architects D. I. Burdin, V. A. Klimov, Yu. R.
Rabaev and sculptor N. V. Tomsky, took place on May 8, 1967. Since
December 1997, one of the most significant monuments of the country has
been post No. 1; until 1993, this role was performed by the mausoleum of
V.I. Lenin. The changing of the guard of honor, consisting of the
Presidential Regiment, takes place every hour and is worth a look. To
the right of the star with the Eternal Flame is a granite alley of hero
cities.
27 Grotto "Ruins". The monument was erected
simultaneously in honor of the victory over Napoleon's army and as a
sign of the revival of Moscow after the fire of 1812. Was created by
O.I. Beauvais in 1841 in the form of a decorative cave formed by the
arch of the grotto, based on stone columns going deep into the ground.
The wings of the grotto are picturesquely lined with fragments of Moscow
buildings destroyed by the French. A low observation deck was made above
the grotto, and in the good old days an orchestra played near the
grotto.
Moscow Red Square (Beautiful Square to be
precise) is the same symbol of Moscow as the Kremlin. From
the west, it is bounded by the Kremlin wall, near which Lenin's
mausoleum stands, from the south it overlooks the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky
Bridge, and from the other two sides it is surrounded by various
historical buildings, some of which, however, were destroyed in Soviet
times for the passage of heavy military equipment and restored only in
recent years. There are always a lot of police on the square, they are
always building or dismantling some kind of temporary structures: in
winter, for example, there is a skating rink. Don't do anything that
attracts attention and could be mistaken for a demonstration: this is
fraught with unpleasant consequences. You can take pictures without
restrictions. The nearest metro stations are Okhotny Ryad,
Teatralnaya and Revolution Square.
28 Pokrovskiy Sobor
(Holy Virgin Protection) or St. Basil Cathedral (Cathedral
of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, on the Moat) , Red
Square, 2. ☎ +7 (495) 698-33-04. 11:00–18:00, closes one hour earlier in
winter, the first Wednesday of the month is a sanitary day. 500 rub.
Probably the most recognizable and most famous building in Moscow in the
world. The cathedral was built from 1555 to 1561 under the personal
supervision of Ivan the Terrible in honor of the capture of Kazan (which
took place in 1552 on the day of the Intercession of the Most Holy
Theotokos, hence the name); while the cathedral was originally Trinity.
Barma and Postnik are traditionally considered architects, but nothing
is known for certain about this. If Postnik Yakovlev is really mentioned
as the Pskov architect who built the Annunciation Cathedral of the Kazan
Kremlin, then nothing is known about Barma at all - it is even unclear
whether this is the same person as Postnik or another. One way or
another, something absolutely incredible turned out, which had no
analogues in Russian architecture of that time, and even later all at
least somewhat similar buildings are copies of the cathedral in one form
or another.
The cathedral was made of a rare material for that time -
brick. The absence of a clearly defined facade creates the illusion of
an unsystematic heap of volumes, but, looking closer, it is easy to find
that the building basically has a strict geometric plan: around the
central pillar with a tent strictly along diagonal axes, eight
pillar-like aisles are set, the different heights of which, together
with differently decorated picturesque domes and creates this effect. By
the way, the architecture of the temple has something in common with two
almost contemporary buildings: the central volume is close to the Church
of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye, and the design of the aisles resembles
the Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo.
In 1552
he died, and in 1588 he was canonized and buried in a separate church
attached to the cathedral, the Moscow holy fool Vasily the Blessed,
hence his second name. Inside, murals of the 16th-18th centuries, as
well as icons, have been preserved. Currently, the cathedral functions
as a branch of the Historical Museum. It is interesting to go inside,
wander along the narrow stairs and corridors and once again feel the
complex structure of this incredible structure.
29 Monument to
Minin and Pozharsky (in front of St. Basil's Cathedral). The first
sculptural monument in Moscow is dedicated to Kuzma Minin and Dmitry
Mikhailovich Pozharsky, the leaders of the second people's militia, who
were driven out by the Polish interventionists and thus ended the Time
of Troubles. Built in 1818 from brass and copper, sculptor Ivan Martos.
Money for the monument was collected by all-Russian subscription. Nearby
is Lobnoye Mesto — a 13-meter stone platform, in its modern form, built
by Matvey Kazakov in 1786 in white stone in the same forms as the brick
one that stood before. The original Execution Ground was built in the
first half of the 16th century, used for public speeches (in particular,
Ivan the Terrible) and, more famously, public executions. Once both the
monument and the Execution Ground stood in the center of Red Square, but
then they were moved to St. Basil's Cathedral.
30
Lenin's Mausoleum
(near the Senate Tower). Tue–Thursday, Sat, Sun 10:00–13:00. For free.
The existing building of the mausoleum is the third in a row. It was
built according to the project of the famous Russian and Soviet
architect A. V. Shchusev in 1929-1930. For the cladding of the
reinforced concrete building, reminiscent of Babylonian ziggurats,
granite was used with marble, labrador and porphyry trim. Inside, in the
funeral hall, there is a glass sarcophagus with the body of V. I. Lenin.
The place has ceased to be a cult place, but due to limited opening
hours, queues line up here, as in Soviet times. Large items will most
likely be asked to be left in a storage room. Then you will slowly walk
past the sarcophagus and exit from the back of the mausoleum to the
Kremlin wall. The interest of this tour is partly in seeing the
mausoleum up close, and also looking at Red Square from an unusual
angle.
31 Necropolis near the Kremlin wall. Tue–Thursday, Sat,
Sun 10:00–13:00. From 1917 to 1984, statesmen, leaders of the
international communist movement and just famous people were buried near
the Kremlin wall and in the wall itself. It all started with the mass
graves of those killed in the armed uprising of 1917. The first to be
buried in a separate grave was Sverdlov, the last was Chernenko. The set
of those buried near the Kremlin wall is not entirely trivial and
includes such people as Stalin, Brezhnev, Chkalov, Gagarin, Gorky,
Zhukov and Clara Zetkin, in total about one and a half hundred burials.
Entrance through the mausoleum.
32
State Department Store (GUM). ☎ +7 (495) 788-4343. 10:00–22:00.
Former Upper Trading Rows. Built in 1889-1894 according to the project
of Alexander Pomerantsev and engineer Vladimir Shukhov. They are
interesting not only in appearance, but also, like all Shukhov's
projects, in a rather non-trivial internal arrangement: for example, a
vaulted glass ceiling. The building is huge, only the length of its
facade is 242 m. After numerous resales, the store returned to its
original name GUM, but G now means "Main". On three floors and three
lines stretching along the entire building, there are dozens of
boutiques, an elite deli and a lot of cafes, including a couple of
inexpensive eateries (see Food). In the center of the passage there is a
fountain, which is no longer surprising to anyone, but at the beginning
of the 20th century, and even in Soviet times, it was a curiosity, one
of the traditional meeting places: “in GUM by the fountain.” In order to
entertain visitors and tourists, GUM has recently opened a historical
toilet (2nd line from Nikolskaya, 1st floor), where for 84 rubles (2014)
you can visit a spacious restroom decorated with gold, granite and
marble. How all this is historical - the creators do not specify.
33 Cathedral of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God (Kazan Cathedral),
st. Nikolskaya, 3. The original Kazan Cathedral on this site was built
in the 1610s or 1620s, immediately after the end of the Time of
Troubles. The cathedral was wooden and burned down in 1632. By 1636, a
new one was built in its place, with rich external decoration. The icon
of Our Lady of Kazan, which is now in the Elokhov Cathedral, was kept in
the cathedral, and the well-known archpriest Avvakum was its rector at
one time. In 1936, during the preparation of Red Square for military
parades, the cathedral was demolished. It was restored in 1990-1993,
and, unlike most recent Moscow “reconstructions”, drawings, measurements
and photographs of Pyotr Baranovsky of the 1920s were used here, so we
can assume that the cathedral, although a remake, is as close as
possible to original.
34 Iberian Gate and Chapel aka Resurrection Gate,
1A Voskresenskiye Vorota Ave. Double (two towers, each with an arch)
passage gates are located between the buildings of the City Duma and the
Historical Museum. Originally built in 1535, demolished in 1931 to allow
passage of heavy equipment during parades. In 1994-1995. the gate, as
well as the Iverskaya chapel attached to them (1791, demolished in 1929)
were restored. Like the Kazan Cathedral, this is a remake of good
quality: one of the six gates of the Kitai-Gorod wall, built in the 16th
century and surrounding the entire territory of Kitay-Gorod, and the
only ones that have survived.
The building of the
State Historical Museum closes the square.
The name Kitai-Gorod refers to the trading quarter
adjoining the Kremlin from the northeast. Scientists argue about the
origin of the name. The official version from the information plate says
that the name comes from whales - tied bundles of brushwood, of which
the first defensive structure around the settlement consisted. Another
version is connected with the Turkic word katai - city, fortress, or
with the Italian citta - citadel, fortification. In any case, the name
has nothing to do with China.
In 1535-1538, a red-brick fortress wall
was built around the settlement, it was built by the Italian architect
Petrok Maly. It started from the current Corner Arsenal Tower and
covered the territory bounded by Teatralnaya Proyezd, Staraya and Novaya
Squares and Kitaigorodskiy Proyezd, ending on the banks of the Moskva
River at the Beklemishevskaya Tower of the Kremlin. At first, the
fortress had 12 towers, seven of which were travel towers. Later, part
of the gates were laid, and in the 19th century several break gates
appeared, the last of them, in 1871, was the gate to Tretyakovskiy
passage. Oddly enough, by the 1930s, the Kitaigorodskaya wall, the
towers, and most of the gates were preserved, but then the Stalinist
reconstruction of Moscow happened, and by 1934 almost all the
fortifications were destroyed. There is nothing left of the 16th
century: a small section of the wall on Revolution Square with the
“Kremlin” battlements of 1821 and the end at the round Bird Tower next
to Tretyakovskiy passage, a fragment of the wall restored in the 1970s
along Kitaigorodskiy passage - it quite accurately reproduces the
ancient wall, and the accidentally preserved foundation of the
Varvarskaya Tower, which, together with a memorial plaque, can be seen
at the exit from the underpass at the corner of Varvarka and
Kitaygorodsky proezd. All other towers and gates observed today were
restored at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century.
The main thoroughfares of Kitay-gorod are Varvarka, Ilyinskaya and
Nikolskaya streets - each of them had its own face in ancient times. In
the 19th century, the former intimacy of buildings almost disappeared
and many buildings in the Art Nouveau style appeared along the main
thoroughfares. The Soviet era made its contribution to the design of the
area, adding a number of gray faceless buildings and destroying many
architectural monuments. Now Kitay-gorod is a mixture of buildings from
different eras, some of which are ruins bashfully covered with canvases.
But pleasant surprises are also possible here: in narrow alleys and even
in doorways, you can come across genuine treasures.
The area between Varvarka and the river is called so
due to the fact that historically it was separated from the Kremlin by
rows of shops (standing on Moskvoretskaya Street). The nearest metro
station is Kitay-Gorod.
36 The Church of the Conception of the
Righteous Anna, in the Corner (second quarter of the 16th century),
Moskvoretskaya Embankment, 3. One of the oldest Moscow posad churches
finally got out from behind the fences around the former Rossiya Hotel
and took its rightful place in the center of the new Zaryadye park. In
ancient times, the church stood at the corner tower of the Kitaigorod
wall, for which it received the second part of its name - in the Corner.
The one-domed pillarless stone temple was built in the second quarter of
the 16th century on the site of an even more ancient wooden one. The
façades of the quadrangle are divided by blades, typical for their time,
and end with three-bladed arches, separated from the main wall by a
runner's belt. The southern and northern aisles, as well as the two-tier
porch, which enriched the composition of the church, appeared in the
17th century. The temple was often visited by members of the Romanov
royal family, who donated considerable funds for its maintenance and
reconstruction.
37 Church of the Great Martyr Barbara on Varvarka
(1796-1804) st. Varvarka, 2. The Church of St. Barbara has stood on this
site since at least the 14th century, and it was she who gave the name
to Varvarka Street. The modern building was built in the classicist
style by architect Rodion Kazakov. This is one of the few surviving
works of his. The bell tower was added in the 19th century. The church
itself has a cruciform shape, with a round dome. Porticos of six columns
each were made on the north and south sides. The church is not so
interesting compared to its neighbors, but it is a good and not quite
ordinary example of classicism, so do not neglect it.
38 Old English Court
(XV-beginning of the XVII century), st. Varvarka, 4a. ☎ +7 (925) 888 70
23. Tue–Wed and Sun 10:00–18:00, Thu 11:00–21:00, Fri–Sat 10:00–20:00.
Permanent exhibition 200 rubles, temporary - 100 rubles. This is a
rather rare thing - a civil building built in the 15th century. In 1553,
Ivan the Terrible, who was then interested in trade with England, handed
over the chambers to the British, and they served as a diplomatic and
trade mission. After the English Moscow Company bought another house in
Moscow in 1636, these chambers began to be called the Old English Court.
In 1649, relations deteriorated, all the British were expelled from
Moscow, and the chambers were confiscated in favor of the treasury. They
were owned by private individuals, and during the Soviet era a library
was located here. In the 1970s, restoration was carried out and the
chambers, as far as possible, were returned to their original
appearance, and in 1994 the Old English Court Museum was opened here,
where the atmosphere of the embassy period was recreated.
39
Church of St. Maximus the Confessor (1696-1699), st. Varvarka, 4. The
church was built in the name of the first Moscow holy fool Maxim the
Blessed, who lived in the 15th century. It is not known when the first
church in the name of the saint appeared, but the fact is considered to
be reliably established that already in 1568 the stone church of Maximus
the Confessor already existed. In 1676, it burned down, was renewed at
the end of the 17th century, and after another fire in 1737, which
destroyed almost half of the center of Moscow, it was restored in a
baroque style uncharacteristic of Kitay-Gorod. During the invasion of
the French, the church suffered little and services did not stop there.
A two-tiered bell tower with a spire - and today it noticeably lopsided
- was built in 1829 in the Empire style, replacing an older belfry. The
church was seriously restored in 1965.
The former Znamensky
Monastery, among the buildings of which the most interesting are:
40
Palace of the
Romanov Boyars (XVI century. During 2018 closed for repair and restoration
work), st. Varvarka, 10. Thu–Mon 10:00–18:00, Wed 11:00–19:00, the first
Monday of the month is a sanitary day. 400 rub. XVI-XVII centuries The
chambers are the only building that has come down to us from the once
vast estate of the Romanov boyars, who gave rise to the dynasty of
Russian tsars. The estate already existed at the end of the 15th
century, although the surviving three-story chambers appeared a little
later. Their oldest part is a white-stone vaulted cellar. Most of its
masonry was made at the beginning of the 16th century, and in some
places it was replenished during the restoration of 1857-58, carried out
according to the project of F.F. Richter. During this restoration, the
porch and the upper part of the chambers were restored in the form of a
wooden tower. At the same time, the interior decoration was recreated,
tiled stoves were installed, and the walls were upholstered with
expensive brocade. Now the building houses a museum where you can see
authentic household items of the 17th-18th centuries.
41 Church of
the Icon of the Mother of God "The Sign", st. Varvarka, 8 a. Back in the
16th century, on the territory of the estate of the Romanov boyars there
was a house church in honor of the family icon of the Mother of God "The
Sign". Here, around 1630, the first tsar of the Romanov dynasty, Mikhail
Fedorovich, founded the Znamensky Monastery. The five-domed cathedral
that has come down to us was built in 1684 by Kostroma residents Fyodor
Grigoriev and Grigory Anisimov. It combines the upper cold Znamensky
temple and the lower warm church of St. Sergius of Radonezh. The church
surprises not only with its exterior decoration typical of the 17th
century, but also with a staircase located from the west, ascending to a
high-set porch. The interior design changed significantly at the end of
the 18th century, but from that time only the decoration in the altar
apse of the second tier and fragments of painting have come down to us.
On the territory of the monastery, the Fraternal Corps of the late 17th
century and the bell tower, built in 1827 during restoration work after
the war of 1812, have also been preserved.
Church of the Great Martyr George the Victorious on
the Pskov Hill, st. Varvarka, 12. The first mention of the church dates
back to 1462, and the name Pskovskaya Gora appeared at the beginning of
the 16th century, when a settlement of the Pskov nobility arose nearby,
transported to Moscow by Vasily III after the loss of independence by
Pskov. Since the restoration of the 1960s, the coloring indicates the
time of creation of different parts of the temple. The oldest part of
the building is highlighted in red and white - a high basement on the
foundation of the middle of the 13th century, above which rises the
five-domed church of 1657. Details of rich decor highlighted in white
are made of hand-hewn shaped bricks. After the French invasion, the
church was restored and at that time a refectory painted in light
colors, a porch and a two-tiered bell tower were added to it - all of
them are made in the pseudo-Gothic style. Inside the church, murals of
the 17th-18th centuries have been preserved.
Zaryadye Park. The park
is open around the clock and seven days a week, the pavilions are Mon
14:00–20:00, Tue–Sun 10:00–20:00. Entrance to the park is free, to the
pavilions - with tickets. In 2014-2017, a natural landscape park
appeared in the very center of Moscow. It was created by a consortium
led by the New York architectural bureau Diller Scofidio + Renfro on the
site of a wasteland that arose after the demolition in 2006 of the
Rossiya Hotel, which for some time held the title of the largest in the
world. The opening of the park caused great excitement among Muscovites
and guests of the capital, but so far its plantings are too young to
appreciate the idea of the authors of the project. However, the
attraction turned out to be very exotic, and even without visiting
various pavilions, you can find something to do for a couple of hours:
walk along the Soaring Bridge, climb to the top of the landscape hill,
admire St. Basil's Cathedral and views of the Kremlin through the
"forest", walk along the churches that appear in an unusual perspective
Zaryadye.
Ilyinka, leading from Red Square to Ilyinsky Gate
Square (separating Old and New Squares, Kitai-Gorod), traditionally
had a trade and financial focus. There were guest yards, countless
trading shops, taverns, and part of the land belonged to the monastery
courtyards. In the 19th century, the buildings of the stock exchange,
banks and tenement houses were built on the street, which finally turned
the street into the business center of the city. And aside from the main
highways, in small lanes, several less pretentious, but very remarkable
buildings have been preserved.
46
Church of the Trinity in Nikitinki,
Nikitnikov lane, 3. The church was built either in 1631-1634, or in 1653
(there are two different versions) by order of the merchant Grigory
Nikitnikov (hence the name of the area) by no one knows. Nevertheless,
this church became the standard of the new Moscow style, and hundreds of
similar ones now stand all over Russia, and many thousands have not
survived to this day. The church is completely recognizable -
five-domed, with many kokoshniks, a gallery and an attached hipped bell
tower. All external walls of the church are richly decorated with
carvings. Inside are frescoes by the masters of the Armory, including
Simon Ushakov and Iosif Vladimirov. The mode of visiting the church is
unknown, the museum of Simon Ushakov, which was previously located in
it, is closed. Unfortunately, the urban environment in which the church
stood was gradually destroyed in the 20th century, and now it is
surrounded by ugly buildings of various departments. Ipatievskiy Lane,
leading to the church from Varvarka Street, is closed on weekends and
then access is possible from Nikitnikov Lane during the opening hours of
the Presidential Administration located on Staraya Square.
47
Chambers of Simon Ushakov (XVII century), Ipatievskiy per., 12 building
1. A two-story residential building of the middle of the 17th century
(that is, one of the oldest civil buildings in Moscow), which belonged
to the icon painter Simon Ushakov. There are stone decorations in the
Moscow baroque style on the windows, although the most interesting are
on the side walls, where you can only look through the fence, and
simpler windows overlook the lane. The building belongs to Rosstroy,
there is no access behind the fence. Under the same number 12, building
3 are the chambers of the Borovsky Compound, also from the middle of the
17th century, which used to be in Nikolsky Lane.
48 Church of St.
Nicholas the Wonderworker "Red Ringing", Nikolsky lane, 9 a. The church
retains its name from 1561 ("Red" means "beautiful" in it), but the
building that has survived to this day was built in 1858. The result was
a building rectangular in plan with three cupolas in the pseudo-Russian
style. A high three-story bell tower was attached to the church, which
was once visible from afar, but now the church, like almost everything
in the area, is surrounded by tall and uninteresting buildings, and
access to it is possible only on a working day, when the gates are open
for visiting ministries and departments.
49 New Gostiny Dvor,
Rybny per., 3 (It occupies the quarter between Ilyinka and Varvarka,
following from Red Square behind the Old Gostiny Dvor). The three-storey
building was built in the 1830s in the style of classicism. Pay
attention to the bas-reliefs along the walls.
50 Old Gostiny
Dvor, st. Ilyinka, 4 (It occupies a quarter between Ilyinka and
Varvarka). The territory along the northern side of Varvarka has always
been used for trade. Trading rows have stood here almost since the 14th
century. The modern building of the Old Gostiny Dvor was built from the
1790s to 1805 according to the project of Giacomo Quarenghi - who,
however, did not come to Moscow and did not follow the construction, and
Moscow architects treated the project quite freely. It turned out a
two-story building in the style of classicism with columns and other
attributes. In the 1990s, the building was mutilated by Luzhkov's
reconstruction, but the side overlooking Varvarka did not suffer much.
51 Church of the Prophet Elijah at the Novgorod Compound (Church of
the Prophet Elijah in Teply Ryady, XVI-XVII), st. Ilyinka, 3/8. The
church was built from 1519 to 1521, in the 1820s a bell tower was added
to it, but in 1864 the church was substantially rebuilt, only the upper
one remained from the upper and lower, and besides, it was integrated
into the Warm Trading complex built at the same time. Ryadov, the first
heated commercial building in Moscow. From 1996 to 2008, the rows were
demolished (only two fragments remained, overlooking Bogoyavlensky
Lane), but you still can’t see the church from the outside, only the
onion. The church itself is open and functioning. In the courtyard near
the church, there is, among other things, a gas station and a car wash,
which, apparently, by a wide margin is a record for the distance from
the Kremlin and for the irrational use of insanely expensive land in the
city center.
52 Former Trinity courtyard, st. Ilyinka, 5. The
courtyard of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery was located on the corner of
Ilyinka and the current Birzhevaya Square since 1535. It included the
Church of the Life-Giving Trinity, demolished in 1787, rented rooms,
shops and a tavern. By the end of the 18th century, all these buildings
were pretty dilapidated and were rebuilt, and in 1874 the architect P.P.
Skomoroshenko built a new five-story apartment building, which at that
time became the tallest civil building in Moscow. The ground floor was
intended for trading shops, and above were rented offices. The tavern
was also preserved, having moved to the basement, and its successor, a
cafe-restaurant, remained there until 2000. In Soviet times, the
building was used by various offices, and now it belongs to the Chamber
of Commerce and Industry.
53 Exchange building (1873-1875) st.
Ilyinka, 6. The first Neo-Renaissance stock exchange building was built
in 1839 according to the project of M. Bykovsky on the site of a
spontaneous exchange of Moscow merchants near the old Gostiny Dvor. When
the old building became cramped, land was bought in the neighborhood and
in 1875 a new two-story building was erected with a classical main
facade, decorated, among other things, with a sculptural image of the
patron saint of trade, Mercury. The building was built by the architect
A.S. Kaminsky, who designed the side facade in the style of the previous
building. The third floor was added in 1925. Now it houses the Chamber
of Commerce and Industry.
54 Temple of Cosmas and Damian in Old
Pani, 4 Staropansky Lane. Nevertheless, on the whole, it retains an
unusual old Russian appearance, with two cupolas on a narrow drum and
rich decorations.
Nikolskaya goes from Red Square ( Revolution Square,
Teatralnaya) to Lubyanskaya ( Lubyanka) and at the same time runs
along the oldest buildings in Moscow. It is named after the monastery of
St. Nicholas the Old, which disappeared without a trace, which stood in
the area of house 11. Now the street has been converted into a
pedestrian one and, with the exception of the even side of the street
almost completely curtained for reconstruction, looks like European
walking areas.
55 Mint, st. Nikolskaya, 5/1 building 1. One of
the oldest industrial buildings in Moscow. This is historically the
second mint in Moscow, it worked as intended from 1697 to 1797. The
oldest building of the courtyard (Red Mint) dates back to 1697 and
divides the courtyard into outer and inner. In the 1730s, a new building
was built, the so-called House of Provincial Government, overlooking Red
Square. The building was then rebuilt several times, in particular,
under Catherine under the project of Matvey Kazakov.
56
Zaikonospassky Monastery, st. Nikolskaya, 7-9. The monastery was founded
in the 17th century. For some time in the 17th century, the poet Simeon
of Polotsk was its rector. Since 1685, the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy,
the first institution of higher education in Moscow, has been located
here. The most significant building of the monastery, the Spassky
Cathedral, was built in 1660-61 and was later rebuilt in the Baroque
style. The bell tower, which is about the same height as the cathedral,
was restored in the 1990s.
57
Cathedral of the Epiphany,
Bogoyavlensky lane, 2. The monastery was founded in the 13th century and
was badly damaged by a fire in 1686. The lower church of the temple is
dedicated to Our Lady of Kazan and was built in 1624. The upper one was
built after the fire, from 1692 to 1696, in the Naryshkin baroque style,
which is characterized by rich outdoor decorations. In 1747, a chapel of
St. George was added from the north. In addition to the cathedral, two
buildings have been preserved in the monastery (abbot's and fraternal).
58 Printing Yard, st. Nikolskaya, 15. The oldest industrial complex
in the center of Moscow traces its history back to the printing house of
Ivan Fedorov, located on this site in 1563. Already at the beginning of
the 17th century, the printing house with a complex of wooden buildings
was separated from the street by a fence with wooden gates, on which the
coat of arms of the Printing House was carved - a lion with a unicorn.
In the middle of the 17th century, the Printing Yard was rebuilt in
stone, turning into one of the most majestic public buildings in the
city. The current building was erected in 1811-1815 for the Synodal
Printing House according to the project of the architects A.N. thread.
In the inner part of the courtyard (it is accessible only to students
and teachers of the Russian State University for the Humanities located
in the building), the "teremok" has been preserved - chambers made by
N.A. Artleben in 1872-1875 in the forms of the 17th century.
59
Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Chizhevsky
Compound, st. Nikolskaya, 8/1. A small church in the style of the
Naryshkin baroque was built in 1691 instead of the chapel of the
Assumption at the unpreserved Myrrh-Bearing Church - the place where the
books of the Printing House were consecrated. Until the middle of the
19th century, the building standing in the back of the courtyard was
clearly visible from Nikolskaya Street. Later, it was hidden by the
three-story house of the Chizhevsky Compound, placed along the street
line. The church stands on a high vaulted basement; ancient paintings
have been preserved on the walls of the octagon in the interior.
There are several squares around the Kremlin, but it is unlikely that you will inspect them consistently. It is more likely that you will come across them when leaving the subway or heading to other areas of the center. With the exception of the Old and New Squares located inside Kitai-Gorod, all these squares are fragments of a continuous line of footholds built around the Kremlin in the 15th-16th centuries for defense and fire-fighting purposes. Of course, nothing has survived from those times, and even the layout of the squares has undergone many changes. Most of the buildings that have survived here appeared after the fire of 1812, but there are also buildings of the 18th century.
Library named after Lenin,
Alexander Garden, Borovitskaya.
Actually, the square in its
present form arose only in the 1930s when the entrances to the new
Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge under construction at that time were organized.
The square was laid out on the site of the old passage and part of the
building to the south of it, and it received its name from the
Borovitsky Gates and the tower located nearby. On the square is one of
the entrances to the Alexander Garden.
60 Pashkov House (Old
building of the Russian State Library), st. Mokhovaya, 3/5 st. One of
the best monuments of Russian classicism, usually attributed to Vasily
Bazhenov, although there is no documentary evidence that the project
belongs to Bazhenov. The house was built in 1784-1786 for the officer
Pyotr Pashkov, and in 1839 it was sold to Moscow University. Since 1921,
the building has housed a library. The best view of Pashkov's house from
the Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge. The building itself consists of a central
house and two outbuildings. Once there was a garden in front of the
house, but as a result of the expansion of Mokhovaya Street, Pashkov's
house ended up on a hillside above Borovitskaya Square. The staircase
from the entrance down the hillside was built already in Soviet times.
Noteworthy is the second facade of the building from the side of
Starovagankovsky Lane, in which the St. Nicholas Church built in the
18th century in Stary Vagankovo is located, known at least since the
16th century.
Library named after Lenin,
Okhotny Ryad, Teatralnaya, Arbatskaya, Alexander Garden.
The layout of the square, close to the modern one, arose in the 1930s,
when the dense buildings surrounding the Manezh building were demolished
in connection with the construction of the metro. At the same time, the
square acquired the name Manezhnaya, although for 23 years of the Soviet
period it was known as the square of the 50th anniversary of October. In
the 1990s, a large Okhotny Ryad shopping complex was built under the
square, and a cascade of fountains appeared in the Alexander Garden, as
well as harmless sculptures of birds and animals, popularly called
"tsereteliks" due to the fact that the author of the reconstruction
project was sculptor Zurab Tsereteli. It is interesting that two
fountains, "Four Seasons" (depicts 4 horses) and "Veil" (located behind
the horses), are also known as "Washing the Horses".
61 Manege ,
Manezhnaya sq. 1. It was built in 1817 on the occasion of the 5th
anniversary of the victory of Russia in the Patriotic War of 1812
according to the project of A. A. Betancourt, and in 1824-1825 the
facades were finished in the Empire style by Osip Bove. The building was
badly damaged by a fire in 2004 and was rebuilt according to the project
of the architect P. Yu. Andreev, with a complete change in the interiors
and some exterior details.
62 The old building of Moscow State
University on Mokhovaya, st. Mokhovaya, 11. The building was built in
1776-1793 according to the project of M. F. Kazakov for the Moscow
University founded in 1755. After a fire in 1812, it was restored in the
Empire style by the Swiss Domenico Gilardi. Now the Institute of Asian
and African Studies at Moscow State University and the university museum
are located here. To his left, at the corner of Bolshaya Nikitskaya and
Mokhovaya streets, stands the Church of the Martyr Tatiana, consecrated
in 1837, and even to the left, the building of the Faculty of Journalism
of Moscow State University.
63
Hotel National, st.
Mokhovaya, 15/1. The building of the hotel, opened in 1903, is designed
in eclectic style with modern elements. It was conceived as a
world-class hotel and was equipped with elevators, telephones, baths and
water closets. After the revolution, the hotel housed part of the
government. The panel on an industrial theme, installed on the corner of
the building, was made in 1932.
64 Moscow Hotel. The current
building was built in 2008 on the site of the demolished hotel of the
1930s, made with the participation of A.V. Shchusev. The appearance of
the new hotel is as close as possible to the Shchusev solution. The true
reasons for the demolition and construction of another, but exactly the
same, building are still a mystery. Opinions are expressed that the
reason was money laundering. The demolition of the Moskva Hotel, along
with Voentorg and Manezh, is considered one of the heaviest losses that
Moscow architecture suffered in the 2000s.
65
House of Unions (building of the
noble assembly), st. Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 1. Public building in the style
of classicism, built in Okhotny Ryad for the Moscow noble assembly by M.
F. Kazakov no later than 1775. In Soviet times, it was renamed the House
of the Unions.
Okhotny Ryad, Teatralnaya, Revolution Square
The square in its present form arose after the fire of Moscow in
1812, when everything burned out here, and the entire area had to be
redesigned. At first it was called Petrovskaya, but after the
construction of the Bolshoi and Maly theaters in the 1820s, it received
the name Teatralnaya. From 1919 to 1991 it was called (like the
Teatralnaya metro station) Sverdlov Square. Revolution Square also
appeared at the beginning of the 19th century and was called
Resurrection Square after the corresponding gates of Kitay-Gorod.
Renamed in 1919.
It is not surprising that there are three
theaters on Theater Square at once - the Bolshoi, the Maly and the
Academic Youth. All of them occupy historical buildings, and the Bolshoi
Theater is, without exaggeration, one of the symbols of Moscow.
66
Hotel Metropol,
Teatralny proezd 2. One of the first Moscow buildings in the Art Nouveau
style was built in 1899-1905. The main author of the project was V.F.
Walcot, although many famous artists and architects of the turn of the
19th and 20th centuries took part in the design of the hotel. The
central ceramic panel "Princess Dream" is made according to the sketches
of M. Vrubel and is perhaps the most famous in Moscow. And in the design
of the interiors, sketches by V.M. Vasnetsov and K.A. Korovin.
67
Monument to Karl Marx. The monument was supposed to be erected back in
the 1920s, but for some reason, hands reached it only in the 1960s. The
granite sculpture of Lev Kerbel, installed in 1961 and depicting the
upper half of Marx's torso on a pedestal in the form of a
parallelepiped, was included in all textbooks as one of the best
examples of socialist realism art, and in urban folklore, noting the
outward resemblance of the pedestal to a refrigerator.
68 Central
department store (TSUM) , st. Petrovka, 2. The former store "Muir and
Maryliz", was built in 1908-1910 in the European Gothic style with
elements of Art Nouveau. The famous architect R. I. Klein worked on the
project.
Lubyanka
This is one of the oldest Moscow
squares. It has been known since 1480, when Prince Ivan III of Moscow,
having captured Novgorod and destroyed the Novgorod Republic, moved a
large number of Novgorodians to Moscow and settled them in this area.
The name comes from Lubyanitsa, a district of Novgorod. Until the 1970s,
pre-revolutionary buildings were almost entirely preserved on
Lubyanskaya Square (the exception is the Detsky Mir store built in the
1950s), but almost everything was demolished either in the 1970s or in
the 1990s. From 1926 to 1990 it was called Dzerzhinsky Square (metro,
respectively - Dzerzhinskaya).
69 Children's world. The building
was built in 1957 according to the project of A.N. Dushkin on the site
of the Lubyansky passage, parts of which were included in the new
building. The three-story Atrium was considered the center and the best
part of the Soviet version of the department store. In 2008-1015, the
building underwent a major renovation that changed its interior layout.
The store is not fully operational yet, many departments are still
waiting to open. But there are various gaming devices and catering
points located on the top floor. From the top floor you can get to the
"Museum of Childhood", and on the roof of the building there is an
observation deck with views of Lubyanka Square and Kitay-Gorod, the
price of an entrance ticket is 70 rubles. (2021)
70 Solovetsky stone,
Lubyanka Square. The monument to the victims of Soviet repressions was
erected in 1990 opposite the building of the former NKVD, from where the
orders to arrest people came from. The granite stone for the monument
was brought from the village of Solovetsky, where the Solovetsky Special
Purpose Camp and the Solovetsky Prison were located in the Solovetsky
Monastery in 1923-1939. The square in front of the Solovetsky stone is
often used to express political protest.
71 The building of the
Rossiya Insurance Company. It was built in 1897 by an insurance company
and was rented out for housing and offices. In 1918, the tenants were
expelled, and the Cheka moved into the building. It is infamous for the
fact that after 1918 and to this day secret services were stationed here
- the NKVD, the KGB, and now the FSB. From 1920 to 1941, the building
housed an internal security prison, from which few people came out alive
(however, most of the employees in the building were also shot in the
1930s). In front of the building, in the center of the square, there was
once a monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, demolished in 1991. Offers to put
it back are coming in all the time, so it is very likely that he may
soon return to the pedestal. In 1991, the FSB department was moved to a
neighboring building, but the building itself remained under the
jurisdiction of the FSB. The building after the war was reconstructed
according to the project of Alexei Shchusev.
72 Monument to the
pioneer printer Ivan Fedorov (Beginning of Teatralny proezd). Sculptor
Sergey Volnukhin, architect Ivan Mashkov. The monument was erected in
1909, funds for it were collected by subscription, opened in 1870.
Initially, the monument stood near the wall of Kitay-Gorod, not far from
the building of the Printing Yard, and the Yard itself, respectively, at
the place where Fedorov worked. In addition, there were many bookstores
on Nikolskaya, and in Soviet times one store was right next to the
monument. However, the monument was moved twice, first in connection
with the reconstruction of Teatralny Proezd, then, already in the 1990s,
due to the construction of a shopping complex, as a result of which the
first printer now stands not near a bookstore, but next to car
dealerships selling expensive foreign cars, clearly demonstrating the
role of education and culture in modern Russia.
Subway: Lubyanka Kitay-gorod
In fact, these
are not squares, but streets. New Square connects Lubyanskaya Square and
Ilyinskiye Gate Square (the place where it intersects with Ilyinka and
Maroseyka), and Old Square is its continuation, connecting Ilyinskiye
Gate Square and Varvarsky Gate. They have been known in their present
form since the beginning of the 19th century, and, which is rare, they
were not renamed in Soviet times - as a result of which the name "Old
Square" became associated with the building of the Central Committee of
the CPSU located on it.
The ensemble of New Square is dominated
by the huge building of the Polytechnic Museum.
73 Trading House
of the Moscow Merchant Society, New Square 6/5/2. The building was built
in 1911 according to the project of F.O. Shekhtel and made in the style
of rational modern. It reveals the features of later styles -
constructivism and formalism. The building was built to rent office
space. The houses between this building and the Church of St. John the
Theologian also belonged to the Moscow merchant society and were built
in the 1880s and 1900s.
74 Church of St. John the Evangelist under
the Elm, New Square, 12. The wooden church on the site of the current
Empire church has been known since the end of the 15th century, and it
was to her that the name “under the elm” came from a mighty tree growing
nearby. The first stone building was built in 1658, and the current
church was erected in 1837 in a single ensemble with a low bell tower of
the 1840s and two clergy houses. The church was built according to the
project of S. P. Obitaev and L. P. Carloni and is devoid of convex altar
apses, replaced by a powerful six-columned portico in order to preserve
the building line of New Square, which was narrow at that time. The
vaulted rooms of the basement used to house a "warm church" and, unlike
the upper floors, they avoided serious alterations.
75 Profitable
house of merchants Koznovs, Novaya Ploshchad 14/13. The huge eclectic
building is actually older than all its neighbors and was originally
built in the 18th century, but then rebuilt so many times (the last time
in 1900, architect Olgerd Piotrovich) that it is absolutely impossible
to notice its age.
76 Northern Insurance Company, st. Ilyinka 21, 23.
Two buildings of the former Northern Insurance Company, eastern and
western, are located at the corner of Novaya Square and Ilyinka Street.
The building was built in the 1900s before the demolition of the
Kitaygorod wall and had a very modest design of the western facade
facing the wall, now facing New Square. The western building with a
clock tower and the eastern one with a powerful neoclassical rotunda
were successfully inscribed in the environment, which has undergone
significant changes since then, and were distinguished by innovative
architecture. Before the revolution, the building was used as an office,
and in 1918 it was chosen by the new government. At various times, it
housed the government, the Commissariat for Foreign Trade and all sorts
of committees, including the Party Control Committee. Now here is the
reception of the administration of the President of the Russian
Federation.
77 Monument to the heroes of Plevna. The monument,
designed by architect Vladimir Sherwood, is dedicated to the memory of
Russian grenadiers who died in the battle near Plevna in 1877 during the
Russian-Turkish war. The monument was opened in 1887, on the tenth
anniversary of the event, and is made in the form of an octagonal
chapel, decorated on four sides with high reliefs on the theme that the
Russians are good and the Turks are bad.
78 Profitable house of
the Moscow merchant bank, Staraya Ploshchad, 2/14. The house on the
corner of Staraya Square and Ilyinka was built in the 1830s according to
the design of Beauvais, and in 1894 another floor was added according to
the design of Boris Freidenberg, known for his works in pseudo-Russian
style. It turned out to be a good example of eclecticism.
79
Titov Trading House, Staraya Ploshchad, 4. The house was built in
1912-1915 by the architect Vladimirov Sherwood in the Art Nouveau style.
The building itself is not bad, and well-placed, but it is known mainly
not for its architectural merits, but as a part of history - in Soviet
times, the Central Committee of the CPSU (and, accordingly, the office
of the general secretary) was located here, and now the administration
of the President of the Russian Federation has taken its place . The
neighboring building (house 6) is the former trading house of Armand,
the same Sherwood.
80 Boyarsky Dvor, Staraya Ploshchad, 8. The
former building of the Boyarsky Dvor Hotel, built in 1901-1903 according
to the design of Fyodor Shekhtel, is the most architecturally
interesting building on Staraya Ploshchad. The huge five-story house
includes many easily recognizable Art Nouveau elements, such as windows
with semicircular endings and an add-on on the top floor. Apparently,
the building does not have the status of a cultural monument, and in
Moscow this means that anything can happen to it at any moment. Inside
is the same presidential administration, so you won’t be able to go in
and see the interiors (and just get close).
Kitay gorod
The former Varvarskaya Square has
existed since the 1820s. From 1924 to 1990, like the metro, it was
called Nogin Square, and then it was renamed Varvarsky Gate Square. The
very gates of Kitay-Gorod, which stood in the alignment of Varvarka,
were demolished long before that. In 1992, for some reason, the square
was divided into two (they are not physically separated in any way),
renaming the eastern part, from which Solyanka Street begins, into
Slavyanskaya Square.
81 Monument to Cyril and Methodius. Made by
modern architect Yu.P. Grigoriev and sculptor V.M. Klykov, opened in May
1992. He became famous for a funny curiosity, noticeable, however, only
to connoisseurs of the Old Slavonic language: the inscription on the
pedestal contains as many as five spelling errors, two of which fall on
the word Russia.
82 Church of All Saints on Kulishki,
Slavyanskaya Square, 2 (Right at the metro exit). The first wooden
church on this site was built during the time of Dmitry Donskoy. It is
from its location outside the then city that the expressions "in the
middle of nowhere" and later "in the middle of nowhere" come from. The
modern building in the Moscow baroque style was built in 1687-1689. The
result was a two-story richly decorated building with one dome, an
octagonal bell tower was attached nearby. Now the Moscow courtyard of
the Alexandria Patriarchate is located in the church.
1 The Armory. 700 rub. The Treasury Museum of the
Kremlin, one of the oldest museums in the country. Its history dates
back to the 14th century from the treasury of the great Moscow princes.
In the 16th century, the Armory was not only a repository, but also a
workshop that produced ceremonial and military weapons, and painters who
painted the Kremlin cathedrals and royal mansions worked alongside the
gunsmiths. The modern building of the Armory was built in 1851 according
to the design of Konstantin Ton specifically for the museum. The design
of the facade of the building echoes another creation of Ton, the Grand
Kremlin Palace. The museum occupies two floors and contains the former
treasures of the treasury, including historically significant items such
as Monomakh's cap (an eastern work of the late 13th-early 14th century)
or the throne of Ivan the Terrible, as well as a lot of works of
decorative and applied art from Russia, Europe and Oriental countries of
the XII-XIX centuries.
The visit is possible only with a guided tour,
and most of the time is reserved for organized groups. Only four
sessions are left for individual visitors (10:00, 12:00, 14:30, 16:30),
tickets for which are best ordered in advance via the Internet and
picked up at the box office no later than 45 minutes before the
appointed time. After that, tickets go on sale through the box office,
but there are often not enough of them for everyone. The passage to the
Armory is through the Borovitskaya tower. The ticket price includes an
audio guide. Inside the Armory there is another ticket office unknown to
the general public: there you can try to get a ticket, bypassing the
queues, which will be especially convenient for those who have already
walked around the Kremlin and came to the Armory from the side of
Cathedral Square.
2 State Diamond Fund
(in the same place as the Armory). ☎ +7 (495) 629-20-36. Ticket office:
09:00–16:30 except Thu, break 12:00 - 13:00. 500 rub. The exhibition
belongs to the Gokhran and shows the most famous gems, mostly also
coming from the treasury. The entrance to the Diamond Fund is through
the Borovitskaya Tower, the ticket office at the entrance to the
building. Visit only with a guided tour. Groups drive every 20 minutes,
but there are a lot of organized tours, so waiting times are
unpredictable for individual visitors. There is no pre-sale of tickets.
3
State Historical Museum, Red
Square, 1. ☎ +7 (495) 692-40-19. 10:00–18:00 except Tue; Fri–Sat
10:00–21:00. 400 rub. National Historical Museum of Russia. The
exposition tells, and in great detail, about the history of Russia until
the beginning of the 20th century. Although only a small part of the
museum's collections is on display, the exposition is still very rich,
and it is unrealistic to examine it in detail in a day, choose topics
that interest you. The museum building was built in 1875-1881 according
to the project of architects Vladimir Sherwood and Alexander Popov in
pseudo-Russian style to fit into the Red Square ensemble.
4
Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812 (Building of the City Duma).
10:00–18:00 except Tue; Fri–Sat 10:00–21:00. 350 rub. Part of the
Historical Museum dedicated to the war of 1812 and opened in 1812 in the
building of the former City Duma. The building in the pseudo-Russian
style was built in 1890-1892 according to the project of Dmitry
Chichagov specifically so that it was in harmony with the building of
the Historical Museum that was already standing next to it.
5
Polytechnic Museum (Closed for renovation, presumably until 2025),
Novaya Ploschad, 3/4. ☎ +7 (495) 730-5438. It was founded to accommodate
the exhibits of the Polytechnic Exhibition, held in Moscow in 1872 on
the occasion of the bicentenary of Peter I. The construction of the
museum buildings was carried out in three stages. In 1875–1877,
according to the project of I.A. Monighetti N.A. Shokhin built the
central volume of the building, in 1896 the same Shokhin added a
two-story volume from the south, and in 1903–1907 engineer G.I. Makaev
built the northern wing. The multi-temporal volumes that form a single
ensemble serve as a clear illustration of different periods of the
"Russian style". Inside the building there are well-organized spaces for
the exhibition, contrasting with the external pseudo-Russian design.
Many famous poets and scientists performed in the Large Auditorium of
the museum at different times. Among them are Mayakovsky, Yesenin,
Zabolotsky, Okudzhava, Mechnikov, Vavilov, Bor and many others.
6 Moscow Bolshoi Theatre,
Teatralnaya sq. 1. The theater building was built in 1820-1824 by the
architect O. I. Bove using the project of A. A. Mikhailov. The
monumental building with a powerful eight-column portico and a copper
quadriga of Apollo above the pediment (sculptor P. K. Klodt) is an
outstanding monument of the Russian Empire style. After a fire in 1853,
the theater was rebuilt by the architect A.K. Kavos. In the 20th
century, the building was periodically repaired, the interior design
changed, in particular, in the 1950s, the stage of the theater was
decorated with a chic "golden" curtain, which has survived to this day
in a slightly modified form. After a large-scale reconstruction in the
2000s, which caused a lot of controversy between officials and members
of the public, the usual musical performances for the theater are staged
on two stages - historical and new. Getting into the country's most
famous theater is easy: tickets go to the theater box office (easiest to
find at metro stations in the city center), but tickets can be quite
expensive, although on the theater's website they start at an incredible
100 rubles. The price of a ticket depends heavily on the performance
(chic ballet performances are always more expensive than opera
performances), and the place in the hall, and the price of tickets for
fashionable premiere shows can be completely prohibitive. By the way,
the best acoustics in the historic hall are in the seats in the first
tier, and the worst in the first six rows of the stalls and benoir. The
New Stage has its own trouble: almost half of the stage is not visible
from the side seats on the balcony, so choose seats closer to the center
and better in the first row. Shortly before the performance, unsold
reservations can be purchased at the box office of the theater and, of
course, the "services" of speculators are always available. In addition,
there is an electronic ticketing system.
7 Maly Theatre. In 1818,
when the project for the arrangement of Theater Square appeared, the
land where the theater now stands was bought by the merchant Vasily
Vargin and built a house there. In 1824, he sold the house to the
Administration of the Imperial Theatres, the architect Alexander
Elkinsky, according to the project of Osip Bove, rebuilt the building
into a theater, which was opened there and later became known as the
Maly Theater. In the late 1830s, Konstantin Ton significantly enlarged
the building, which took on a more or less modern look. Now it is a
fairly typical monument of Russian classicism. As of 2014, the building
is being reconstructed, and everything goes to the fact that only an
authentic appearance will remain of it.
8 Russian Academic Youth
Theatre, Theater Square 2. The building was built in 1821 by the
architect Fyodor Shestakov and is a monument of classicism architecture.
Since 1898, it has been occupied by various theaters, while since 1936
the current owner, who for most of its history was known as the Central
Children's Theater. Initially, the building was known as the Poltoratsky
house and was rebuilt twice, once in 1869 (the mezzanine was rebuilt as
an auditorium, after which, in fact, it became possible to use it as a
theater), then in the 1900s according to the Klein project. There are
many performances based on children's books in the theater's repertoire,
but there are also completely adult performances.
In winter, a skating rink is traditionally flooded on Red Square. Good ice is prepared anew for each hour and a half session (they start every 2 hours: the first at 10:00, the last at 22:00). On weekends, few people ride confidently: 40-50% are children under 10 years old, and 30% of adults cannot confidently ride even in a circle. 10-15 people are constantly moving against the flow, and the administration does not fight it. There is a pathos audience, but it is invisible. The locker room at the beginning and end of the session is overcrowded.
No one lives in Kitai-Gorod, so there are no shops
there either. On Nikolskaya near Lubyanskaya Square you will find a
couple of shopping centers with indecently expensive boutiques, there is
no point in going there. GUM performs more of a museum and entertainment
function, although if you suddenly need a pen or a map of the city, you
can buy them there, and at a not very large markup.
1 Grocery
store No. 1, GUM, 3rd line, 1st floor (at night, entrance from Vetoshny
Lane). around the clock. Like the rest of GUM, this deli is more like a
museum: beautifully laid out cheeses and arranged bottles create such a
wonderful composition that it would be at least unreasonable to destroy
it with your purchase. The assortment and price level are reminiscent of
the ABC of Taste: you can find any kind of elite products or something
quite ordinary, but at a high price.
2 Okhotny Ryad shopping complex,
under Manezhnaya Square. 10:00–22:00. Opened in 1997, the underground
shopping complex was the first institution of this type in Moscow and at
first was among the city's attractions: on the dome sticking out in the
middle of Manezhnaya Square, a map of the world is drawn, which from
below, from underground, looks much more interesting than outside. Now
the shopping center does not seem like a curiosity, but a senseless heap
of boutiques. However, on its lower floor there is a large and
inexpensive food court, which has no analogues on the surface.
Two tiny grocery stores were accidentally preserved in the yards. They
have a small selection, prices are above average:
3 Mini-market, st.
Nikolskaya, 9 (gateway leading to Nikolskaya street from Theater
Square). 8:30–23:00.
4 Products, trans. Vetoshny, 5/4 (corner from
Nikolskaya, behind GUM). Mon–Fri 8:00–22:00, Sat–Sun 9:00–22:00.
The area around the Kremlin and Kitay-Gorod is not the
best place to eat. The price level here is average in Moscow, but the
total number of establishments is small, and in the Kremlin, of course,
there are none at all. The easiest way to find something is on
Nikolskaya Street or already in neighboring areas.
Cheap
1 Cafe "Monastyrskaya pastries", st. Varvarka, 8B (fraternal building
next to the chambers of the Romanovs). 11:00–20:00. Pies: 35 rubles,
soup: 70 rubles. Something like the refectory of the Znamensky
Monastery. The atmosphere here is absolutely not metropolitan, and the
prices are moderate.
2 Dining room No. 57 (GUM, 3rd line, 3rd
floor). ☎ +7 (495) 620-31-29. 10:00–22:00. Hot dishes: about 200 rubles.
This is the ideal Soviet dining room - not what it was, but what it
should have been. Dishes from a book about tasty and healthy food,
beautiful design and quite affordable prices. The dining room is fully
adapted for foreigners, which is curious in itself: where else can you
find out how “egg with mayonnaise” and “potato zrazy” are translated
into English? There is also a Soviet soda machine and fruit drinks
poured from large cones. Those who wish can take inexpensive cakes or
beer at the bar - of course, Zhigulevskoye. On the same 3rd floor of GUM
there is a cafe "Festivalnoe", where food is just as inexpensive,
although less colorful. The cafe is divided into sections with names
like "Pancake", "Italy", "Asia": each has its own distribution and its
own assortment.
You can eat relatively inexpensively in the food
court of the Okhotny Ryad shopping center near Manezhnaya Square - in
addition to establishments like Burger King and Crumb Potatoes, there
are a couple of quite ordinary canteens with reasonable prices.
Average cost
3 Varenichnaya № 1, st. Nikolskaya, 11-13. 10:00–24:00.
A chain cafe that actively exploits Soviet motives and offers
traditional food from the Book of Tasty and Healthy Food. A portion of
dumplings or dumplings costs 150-200 rubles, hot dishes: from 300
rubles. There are cheap breakfasts.
4 Cafe "Soroka", st. Nikolskaya,
17, building 2. 9:00–23:00. Hot: from 300 rubles. An inconspicuous cafe
of Georgian cuisine, where you can have a relatively inexpensive meal
like chakhokhbili, and chebureks for 80 rubles and beer for 130 rubles
will easily compete with the famous Moscow wine glasses. In the
evenings, the cafe hosts themed meetings, stand-ups and other cultural
events.
5 Korchma "Taras Bulba", st. Mokhovaya, 8, building 1. ☎ +7
(985) 644-85-44. around the clock. The closest place to the entrance to
the Kremlin where you can eat, and eat heartily and tastefully, in the
best traditions of Ukrainian cuisine. The style can be described as
lubok, if, of course, this concept is generally applicable to the
Ukrainian tradition. Waiters in pantaloons and embroidered shirts,
towels on the walls, and somewhere in the back of the hall there is a
Russian, it is also a Ukrainian oven. Friendship of Peoples.
6 Vysota 5642 restaurant , Bolshoy Cherkassky per. 5/7 (Kitay-gorod).
☎ +7 (495) 624-93-21. Sun–Thursday 11:00–24:00, Fri–Sat 11:00–1:00. Hot
dishes: 400-600 rubles. The restaurant is either Adyghe or Circassian,
and for those who do not understand this - generalized Caucasian
cuisine. The name refers to the height of Elbrus, a cook from Nalchik
works in the kitchen. Visitors mostly praise.
7 Special Buffet No. 1
(Soviet diner), Bolshoy Cherkassky per. 15 (Kitay-gorod). ☎ +7 (499)
579-81-85. around the clock. Hot dishes: 300-400 rubles. From the
American diner here is the interior, and from the Soviet canteen -
everything else, including the quality of service. In the menu of
dumplings, khachapuri, cutlets and sausages, Leonid Ilyich smiles from
the walls: in general, it's funny, but not very cheap and not always
tasty. Judging by the reviews, foreigners like it, Muscovites are not so
optimistic.
Expensive
8 Restaurant Mandarin combustible, Maly
Cherkassky per. 2. 12:00–24:00, Fri and Sat until 6:00. Snacks: 250–500
rubles, hot dishes are more expensive (2014). Styled after the pre-war
Shanghai, the dark bar offers Pan-Asian cuisine, a huge selection of
teas, as well as all kinds of alcoholic drinks and cocktails based on
them. The main hall is complemented by a special tea room with a piano,
where sometimes there is live music. Cheaper than other Moscow
establishments of its kind, but if you don't need atmosphere and a tea
list, you can eat somewhere else for much less money. Visitors praise.
9 "Godunov" restaurant, Teatralnaya sq. 5, bldg. 1. ☎ +7 (495)
698-44-80. 12:00–24:00. Hot dishes: from 1000 rubles (2014). Lubok
designed for foreigners, which begins with a painted door portal and
continues with even more elaborate halls, which hardly had any
historical analogues. A full range of Russian cuisine with the same
sterlet and bear meat. Visitors agree that even in Moscow, traditional
dishes can be found at lower prices.
There are
several standard Coffee Houses and Chocolates in the area, you won’t
miss them, but there are other options:
10 Krispy Kreme Donuts,
st. Nikolskaya, 4/5. 8:00–23:00. Donut: 90 rubles, tea-coffee: 150-200
rubles. The cafe is practically on Red Square, belongs to a little-known
network in Russia specializing in baking American-style donuts. Despite
plastic trays and self-service, it's quite cozy here. Spacious room
filled with the aroma of coffee. WiFi.
1 Romanov bar, st. Nikolskaya, 19. Sun–Wed 12:00–24:00, Thu–Sat 12:00–6:00. Whether it's a basement bar or a restaurant, decorated magnificently, but not without its own style, albeit understood in a very peculiar way: you will surely remember the embossed coffered ceiling in the spirit of the best Moscow metro stations. Large cocktail card, karaoke on weekends. The opinions of visitors are contradictory.
There is no affordable housing in Kitay-Gorod. There
are four large hotels in the entire area - Metropol, National, Four
Seasons (a replica of the demolished Moscow hotel) and St. Regis”, which
have nothing to do with budget accommodation.
Average cost
1
Seven Hills Lubyanka Hotel, Bolshoi Cherkassky per. 4, building 1. ☎ +7
(495) 739-04-49, +7 (968) 931-66-46. Double room: from 5000 rubles. A
mini-hotel converted from an ordinary apartment is suitable for those
who still want to live in the very center of Moscow for not very big
money. It seems that all the basic things are there, amenities in the
room and even breakfast is served in the room (for lack of another place
to eat), however, guests unanimously complain about cramped rooms, noise
and lack of air conditioning. From the windows of the hotel you will see
the informal Kitay-gorod: a gloomy courtyard with garages and eternal
construction. WiFi.
2 Veliy Hotel, st. Mokhovaya, 10. ☎ 35 51 +7
(495) 241 35 51. Double room: from 6000 rubles. The only hotel of its
kind overlooking the Kremlin. Guests complain about poor breakfast and
hearing. There are air conditioners, there is no elevator. WiFi.
Expensive
3 Metropol. ☎ +7 (499) 501-78-40. From 10,000 rubles for a
double room, when booking with an advance payment, you can get a 20-25%
discount. Five-star hotel, decorated in modern style. Furniture and
furnishings, if not from the beginning of the 20th century, then at
least represent a successful stylization, and you can definitely see
antiques in the corridors. Breakfast is served in the restaurant with a
luxurious stained-glass roof.
4 National.☎ +7 (495) 258-70-00. From
17,000 rubles for a double room, when booking with an advance payment,
you can get a discount. Another historical five-star hotel, but this
time in a classic style: for those who like mirrors in heavy gilded
frames and massive chandeliers.
5 Four Seasons. From 36,000 rubles.
Opened in October 2014, all the same scheme - pretentious and very
expensive.
6 Hotel «St. Regis", Nikolskaya, 12 (right next to the
Lubyanka metro station). ☎ +7 (495) 967-77-76. From 20,000 rubles for a
double room. Expensive chain hotel, formerly owned by Kempinski. 210
rooms. The apartment house of Orlov-Davydov with shops reconstructed
beyond recognition (1869-1870, architect Robert Goedicke).
You can easily find Wi-Fi in cafes and restaurants,
but it’s just not available on the street in Kitay-Gorod, and even more
so in the Kremlin.
Post office, st. Nikolskaya, 7. Mon–Fri
8:00–20:00, Sat 9:00–18:00, Sun 9:00–14:00.
The first settlements on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin belonged to the tribes of the Fatyanovo culture, a local version of the battle ax culture - an Indo-European community of the Bronze Age (III-II millennium BC). A Finno-Ugric settlement dating back to the early Iron Age (second half of the 1st millennium BC) was found near the modern Archangel Cathedral. At this time, the Dyakovo-type settlement occupied the center of the upper floodplain terrace of Borovitsky Hill (the area of modern Cathedral Square) and may already have had fortifications. From the northeast, the village was protected by two ravines: one, north of the current Trinity Gate, overlooked the Neglinnaya River, the other lay between the Petrovskaya and Second Nameless Towers of the modern Kremlin.
With the beginning of the Slavic colonization of the Oka and Moscow River basins in the 10th century, the top of Borovitsky Hill was inhabited by the Vyatichi (possibly reclaiming the former settlement). Presumably, the Vyatichi settlement on the hill consisted of two fortified centers - the first, larger in area, was located on the site of modern Cathedral Square, the second occupied the tip of the cape. Presumably, both centers were protected by a ring fortification, consisting of a ditch, rampart and palisade. The Vyatichi included in the defensive structures two ravines connected by a ravine, which performed the same function back in pre-Slavic times; the ravines were transformed into a ditch up to 9 m deep and about 3.8 m wide. Presumably, on the cape of the settlement there was a certain political and administrative center: during archaeological excavations a hanging seal was found here, which was at first considered the seal of the Kyiv Metropolitan of the late 11th century, but it turned out to be later, most likely from Vladimir. Both parts probably had their own cult centers - the upper one in the area of Cathedral Square, the lower one - “under Bor”. The oldest Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist in Moscow was located on this site. The Kremlin toponyms “Makovitsa”, “Mountains” and “Bor” also date back to pre-princely times. These two centers were surrounded by a suburb stretching along the Neglinnaya and Moscow rivers. The development and prosperity of the settlement was connected with the trade routes running here: there was brisk trade between East and West along the Moscow River. In addition to the waterway, two land roads ran nearby - one to Novgorod (later Volotskaya), the other from Kyiv through Smolensk to the northeast; both roads were connected at the foot of Borovitsky Hill by a ford across the Moscow River (in the area of the current Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge).
A list of the Tver Chronicle dating back to the 17th
century reports that in 1156, a city was built by Yuri Dolgoruky on the
southwestern tip of Borovitsky Hill on the territory of the modern
Kremlin. The fortification was surrounded by a ditch 16-18 m wide and at
least 5 m deep. The earthen rampart was about 14.5 m wide and 7 m high.
For those times it was a typical average Russian fortress. The shaft was
reinforced with oak beams, fastened with tongue and groove. The
fortification design, in which a series of logs were used in the lower
part, and a structure made using hack (hook) technology in the upper
part, has analogies with the “transfer” structures in the upper part of
the Serpentine Shafts in the Kiev region. Radiocarbon and archaeological
dating of the wooden elements of the shaft's hook structure indicates
the first half of the 12th century.
In the fall of 1176, Moscow
and the surrounding villages were burned during an attack by the Ryazan
prince Gleb Rostislavich, but the city was soon rebuilt.
In 1238,
during the Tatar invasion, after five days of resistance, the Tatars
took Moscow, which was defended by Yuri’s youngest son Vladimir and
governor Philip Nyanka “with a small army.” The Kremlin was destroyed,
all its defenders were killed, and Vladimir Yuryevich was captured.
According to the Laurentian Chronicle, all monasteries and churches with
villages were burned.
Since 1264, the Kremlin was the residence of Moscow
appanage princes. In 1272, Prince Daniil Alexandrovich (grandson of
Yaroslav Vsevolodovich and youngest son of Alexander Nevsky) built the
Church of the Transfiguration here in the first year of his reign. The
legend about this event is mentioned by Kremlin history researcher
Alexander Voronov.
In 1293, Moscow was taken by the army of the
Tatar prince Tudan (“Dudenev’s army”).
From the very beginning of
the 14th century, the conflict between the Moscow and Tver princes,
which began under Daniil Alexandrovich, intensified. This internecine
conflict continued until 1329 and ultimately ended with a significant
strengthening of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
In 1339, under Ivan
Kalita, oak walls and towers were built.
In the 14th century,
five monasteries were established in the Kremlin. The first of them (the
Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery on the forest) was created in 1330, on
the millennium of Constantinople - “New Rome”. Its center was the
ancient Moscow Church of the Cathedral of the Savior on Bor, or the
Cathedral of the Transfiguration “what is on Bor”. The burials of Moscow
princes and princesses took place here, until the role of the tomb was
transferred to the Archangel Cathedral for men and the Ascension
Monastery (destroyed in 1929) for women. After the establishment of the
Novospassky Monastery at the end of the 15th century, the Cathedral of
the Savior on Bor received the status of a court temple. As a result of
the construction of the Kremlin Palace in 1830-1840, the Church of the
Savior was inscribed in the courtyard of the Palace. The temple was
destroyed on May 1, 1933 based on a decision of the Politburo of the
Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.
Another ancient building was the Chudov Monastery, founded by
Metropolitan Alexy in 1365, located in the eastern part of the Kremlin
territory, adjacent to the Ascension Monastery. It received its name
from the Church of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael in Khoneh, which
later became the tomb of Metropolitan Alexy. In 1483, the Alexievskaya
Church was built on the territory of the monastery. By order of the
Chudov Archimandrite Gennady, the relics of Metropolitan Alexy were
transferred to it. In 1501-1503, the ancient Church of the Archangel
Michael was replaced by a temple built by Italian craftsmen. At the
beginning of the 20th century, a tomb was built in the basement of the
Alexievskaya Church, where the remains of Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich, who died in the Kremlin in 1905 at the hands of
terrorists, were buried. The crypt of the Grand Duke was located under
the floor, exactly under the shrine of St. Alexis. In 1929, all the
buildings of the Chudov Monastery were demolished.
In 1366-1368, under Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy, the
wooden walls of the Kremlin were replaced by walls and towers made of
local white stone (according to archeology, the towers and the most
important parts of the wall were stone, from where there was the
greatest danger of an assault). From this period, the name “White Stone
Moscow” is often found in chronicles.
Soon after the construction
of the white stone walls, they twice - in 1368 and 1370 - withstood the
siege of the troops of Prince Olgerd; in 1382, Khan Tokhtamysh
fraudulently entered the Kremlin and destroyed it, but the fortress was
quickly restored. Gradually, the dense wooden buildings of the Kremlin
were replaced by stone ones, which was facilitated by frequent fires. In
1404, Lazar the Serb assembled and installed the first clock near the
Annunciation Cathedral in the courtyard of Prince Vasily Dmitrievich. By
the middle of the 15th century, the Annunciation Cathedral was rebuilt
and expanded in the Kremlin, a church was erected in the Metropolitan
Courtyard, later called the Deposition of the Robe, and the merchant
Khovrin built the Church of the Exaltation in front of his house. In the
late 1450s - 1460s, in the courtyard of the Simonov Monastery, at the
St. Nicholas Gate, the Church of the Presentation with a stone chamber
was erected, the chapel of the Praise of the Virgin Mary was added to
the Assumption Cathedral, the Church of the Epiphany was erected in the
courtyard of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, and a stone stone chamber
was erected on the territory of the Grand Duke's courtyard. Church of
John the Baptist.
Gradually, the white stone fortifications of
the Kremlin deteriorated; the strength of the material turned out to be
insufficient and the structures “floated” - the chronicles of the 15th
century contain many references to the restoration work carried out. In
1462, large-scale repairs of the walls from the Sviblova Strelnitsa to
the Borovitsky Gate were carried out by V. D. Ermolin.
In the second half of the 15th century, under Ivan III
the Great, a radical restructuring of the Moscow Kremlin began. The new
Assumption Cathedral was the first to be built, because the old one,
built by Ivan Kalita, was already very dilapidated by that time.
Construction in 1471 was initially entrusted to the Russian architects
Krivtsov and Myshkin, but the building, which had been completed to the
vaults, collapsed in 1474 during an earthquake - “the lime was not
glue-free, and the stone was not hard.” Ivan III invited the architect
Aristotle Fioravanti from Italy, who erected the existing building in
the likeness of the Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir by 1479. In
1484-1486, Pskov craftsmen erected a new Church of the Deposition of the
Robe, and in 1484-1489 - a new Annunciation Cathedral on the basement of
the former church. By that time, following Fioravanti, other Italian
architects were invited to Moscow. In 1485, construction began on the
new Grand Ducal Palace, which continued with long interruptions until
1514. The first to be built was the front part of the palace, from which
the Faceted Chamber, which was built by the Italian architects Mark
Fryazin and Pietro Antonio Solari in 1487-1491, has survived to this
day. The construction of the princely choir and the inner wall that
separated them from the rest of the Kremlin was carried out by Aleviz
Fryazin; He also moved the front part of the palace to a new location -
from the south side to the east, facing Cathedral Square. Despite the
fact that the construction of the palace was supervised by Italian
architects, its architecture fully preserved the principles of the
construction of ancient Russian mansions: separate stone and wooden
volumes were erected on a single high stone basement. With the
construction in 1505-1508 of the Archangel Cathedral (architect Aleviz
Novy) and the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great (architect Bon Fryazin), as
well as the building of the State Court between them, the formation of
Cathedral Square as the main square of the Moscow Kremlin was basically
completed.
At the beginning of the 16th century, Italian
craftsmen built new churches in the Kremlin: the Cathedral of the Chudov
Monastery (1501-1503), the Cathedral of the Ascension Monastery (1519),
the Church of St. John the Climacus (1505-1508), the Church of St.
Nicholas of Gostunsky, the Church of St. John the Baptist at the
Borovitsky Gate (1504) was rebuilt ).
Simultaneously with the
construction of the Grand Duke's Palace and the renovation of the
Kremlin churches, the construction of new Kremlin walls and towers was
underway. Beginning in 1485, over the course of a whole decade, under
the guidance of Italian architects, the white stone walls and towers
were dismantled, and new ones made of baked bricks were erected in their
place. The area of the fortress was increased by annexing significant
territories in the north-west and reached 27.5 hectares, and the Kremlin
received the modern outlines of an irregular triangle. The shape of the
towers and the completion of the walls in the form of battlements are
reminiscent of the Scaliger Castle in Verona and the Sforzesco Castle in
Milan. The Moscow Kremlin repeats the Sforza Castle down to the smallest
detail - the top of the walls of the fortress in Russia was crowned with
1045 battlements in the shape of a swallowtail. Even the height of the
Filaret Tower, which houses the entrance to the Sforza Castle, and the
Spasskaya Tower are the same - 71 m.
In 1508, the Alevizov ditch
was dug along the walls, the water into which came from Neglinnaya. The
Kremlin finally turned into an impregnable fortress, surrounded by water
on all sides, isolated from the city that had grown by that time. During
the restoration of the walls and towers in 1946-1950 and in 1974-1978,
white stone blocks used as backfill were discovered inside their
brickwork, in the lower parts and foundations. It is possible that these
are the remains of the white stone walls of the Kremlin from the time of
Dmitry Donskoy.
At the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th
centuries, the main Kremlin streets - Spasskaya, Nikolskaya and
Chudovskaya - were regulated and expanded. By that time, there were
still many courtyards of boyars, clergy and appanage princes in the
Kremlin, who settled mainly in Podol and north of Cathedral Square.
Under Vasily III and Ivan the Terrible, as the struggle with the
appanage princes intensified, the Grand Duke confiscated their yards and
handed them over to his associates. In the 16th century, construction in
the Kremlin consisted mainly of updating and improving existing
buildings and ensembles. In 1532-1552, the Resurrection Church was added
to the bell tower of Ivan the Great; in the middle of the century, the
Annunciation Cathedral was rebuilt; the churches of the Solovetsky
Wonderworkers and the Three Saints appeared in the Metropolitan
Courtyard; The grand-ducal (then royal) palace was rebuilt and expanded
several times. The Annunciation Cathedral became nine-domed, and its
heads, like the heads of the Assumption Cathedral, were covered with
gold taken from conquered Kazan. A unique tented church was erected at
the Trinity Compound. Ivan the Terrible lived for a long time in the
“oprichnina court” outside the Kremlin; after the abolition of the
oprichnina, new Bed Chambers were built for the Tsar in four chambers
not far from the Church of the Savior on Bor (on the site of the current
St. George's Hall).
The first images of the Kremlin have been
preserved from the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th centuries: a
plan placed in the “Notes on Muscovy” by the Austrian ambassador
Sigismund Herberstein, and a plan published by the Dutch cartographer
Gerrits Hessel, called “Kremlinagrad”. The latter gives an idea of the
then existing nature of the Kremlin development. Among the closely
standing buildings, the distinct outlines of Cathedral (Tsarskaya) and
Ivanovskaya squares are visible; from Ivanovskaya Square, two streets
lead through the north-eastern part of the fortress to the Spassky (then
Frolovsky) and Nikolsky Gates; the entire southwestern part is occupied
by a new palace complex, the construction of which lasted throughout the
reign of Boris Godunov and was completed in 1601-1603. The Iranian
diplomat Oruj-bek Bayat, who visited Moscow in 1599, concluded in his
notes: “The houses in the Kremlin were built in the style of Italian
architects and decorated with beautiful ornaments. The king's palace is
especially beautiful..."; he also wrote about the large number of wooden
buildings in the Kremlin.
In 1610-1612, the Kremlin was occupied
by the Polish-Lithuanian garrison of Alexander Gonsevsky.
With the accession of the Romanovs, active construction of church and secular buildings resumed. In 1624, the Spasskaya Tower was built on. In 1635-1636 the Terem Palace and palace churches were built. During the reign of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich (1676-1682) and Princess Sophia (1682-1689), a large-scale restructuring of the Kremlin ensemble was carried out, as a result of which it received its logical conclusion. New buildings of the Prikazov and Chudov Monasteries, riding gardens, chambers of queens and princesses were erected, and all the Kremlin towers (except Nikolskaya) received multi-tiered superstructures with tents decorated with colored tiles. At the same time, the Kremlin changed its color: from brick red it became white. On July 7, 1680, as one ancient historical act says, Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich “ordered the city of the Kremlin to be whitewashed with lime.”
With the beginning of the reign of Peter I, the
significance of the Moscow Kremlin changed noticeably - the tsar moved
first to Preobrazhenskoye and then to St. Petersburg, and the fortress
lost its status as a permanent royal residence. At the beginning of the
18th century, the nature of the Kremlin buildings also changed: after
the devastating fire of 1701, Peter issued a decree in 1704 prohibiting
the construction of wooden buildings inside the Kremlin. In 1702, on the
burnt-out part between the Trinity and Sobakina towers, construction of
the Arsenal building (Tseichhaus) began, which continued intermittently
until 1736. With the beginning of the Northern War, there was a threat
of an invasion of Moscow by the troops of Charles XII, in connection
with which Peter I ordered the construction of bastions along the
Kremlin walls, and the ditches drained in the 17th century to be filled
with water. However, there was no need to use these fortifications -
after the victory of the Russian army near Poltava, the danger passed.
Under Elizaveta Petrovna in the 1743-1750s, the ancient Dining Room,
Reply and Golden Chambers of the palace were dismantled and replaced
with a small, richly decorated building of the Winter Palace designed by
V.V. Rastrelli, built under the supervision of D.V. Ukhtomsky. At the
same time, Ukhtomsky erected the gallery of the Armory Chamber on the
site of the demolished building of the Great Treasury and was engaged in
the restructuring of the Orders. When the Kremlin buildings became
dilapidated, the task was first of all to repair them, and if this was
impossible, the old buildings were allowed to be demolished and restored
“in the same form as before.”
In 1768, for the construction of a
new Kremlin Palace according to the design of V.I. Bazhenov, a special
state organization was created - the Kremlin Building Expedition. When
preparing the site for the new palace, the entire building on the
south-eastern part of the edge of the hill was eliminated, many
monuments of ancient Russian architecture were destroyed, including the
southern part of the Kremlin wall, along with the Tainitskaya and First
Nameless towers, which were dismantled. Bazhenov set himself the goal of
“renewing the appearance of this ancient dilapidated and disorganized
city” in accordance with the then dominant aesthetics of classicism - it
was planned not only to build a new palace, but also to carry out a
radical redevelopment of the main streets and squares of the Kremlin,
leaving only individual cathedrals and buildings of Naryshkin and Peter
the Great baroque. However, in 1775, the construction of the palace was
canceled, the official reason for which was given as the collapse of the
Archangel Cathedral; This decision was facilitated by the huge costs of
reconstruction and Catherine II’s dislike for Moscow. The dismantled
wall with towers was soon restored to its previous forms.
In
1775, the Projected Plan was approved - a plan for the reconstruction of
Moscow, for the implementation of which the Stone Order was created,
headed by P. N. Kozhin. At the end of 1776, Kozhin compiled a separate
report on the reconstruction of the Moscow Kremlin, which envisaged the
creation of regular squares in the Kremlin, the construction of new
palaces and government buildings with “the best facade according to the
rules of the latest architecture.” At the same time, the construction of
new buildings was supposed to be carried out at a distance from the
ancient buildings, which were carefully preserved. In 1763, by decree of
Empress Catherine II, the Senate was divided into departments and two of
them - in charge of the rights of the nobles and the judicial one - were
transferred from the capital to Moscow. To accommodate them, in
1776-1787, according to the design of Matvey Kazakov, the building of
the Government Places (Senate) was built, which became the first major
building of the Kremlin in the style of classicism. With the
construction of the Senate, the last private properties disappeared from
the Kremlin territory. In those same years, Kazakov built the Bishop's
House and the Gothic portico of the Chudov Monastery on Ivanovskaya
Square.
In 1797, Kazakov drew up a new plan for the general
reconstruction of the Kremlin, which was caused by the coronation of
Paul I. Like Bazhenov’s project, Kazakov’s plan for the reconstruction
of the Kremlin remained unfulfilled, but established the idea of the
Kremlin as a single architectural ensemble.
In the first years of the 19th century, the Kremlin
began to be perceived by contemporaries as a symbol of the historical
and military glory of Russia, which caused the appearance of bright
pseudo-Gothic forms in its buildings. Architect I.V. Egotov used Gothic
elements when rebuilding the Amusement Palace and a number of other
Kremlin buildings.
At the same time, the beginning of the 19th
century saw the demolition of many ancient buildings. Among others, the
famous Armorial Gate, Sretensky Cathedral, part of the Amusement Palace,
several churches of the Ascension Monastery, as well as the complexes of
the Bread Palace, Tsareborisov Court and Trinity Compound were
destroyed.
In 1812, Moscow and the Kremlin were captured by
Napoleon's army. The French army entered the Kremlin on September 2,
1812, and Napoleon himself on September 3. However, the very next day he
fled from the Kremlin along a secret passage under the threat of
spreading fire. Retreating, Napoleon ordered the Kremlin buildings to be
mined and blown up. Although most of the charges did not explode, the
damage was significant. The Arsenal, Vodovzvodnaya, Petrovskaya and
First Nameless towers were blown up, the Corner Arsenal Tower and
extensions to the Ivan the Great Bell Tower were seriously damaged, and
the Senate was partially damaged. The restoration was carried out by
architects F.K. Sokolov, D.I. Gilardi; a number of towers were built
according to the designs and under the supervision of O. I. Bove. During
the reconstruction of Red Square, Beauvais gave the Nikolskaya Tower a
Gothic appearance. The Arsenal was restored and received a new finish
later - in 1815-1828 according to the design of Moscow architects A. N.
Bakarev, I. L. Mironovsky, I. T. Tamansky and E. D. Tyurin. At the same
time, captured cannons were placed around the Arsenal, which were sent
to Moscow by special order of Alexander I. In total, it took more than
twenty years to eliminate the consequences of the explosion in the
Kremlin: the last work was completed by 1836.
In 1817, a parade
ground was set up on Ivanovskaya Square for a military parade, for which
the ancient temple of St. Nicholas Gostunsky was dismantled in one
night. In 1823, according to the design of V.P. Stasov, the royal palace
was built on, which again turned out to be small, and already in 1824,
the metropolitan’s house, previously purchased by the treasury, was also
built on and from 1831 began to be called the Small Nicholas Palace. In
the early 1830s, restoration work began on the ancient monuments of the
Kremlin. One of the first academicians F. G. Solntsev and architect P.
A. Gerasimov was to restore the Terem Palace in 1836-1849. In 1836, the
architect O. Montferrand raised and installed on a special pedestal the
Tsar Bell, which fell in the fire of 1737 and lay in a hole all this
time.
By the 1830s, they returned to the idea of building a new
royal palace on the southern slope of the hill along the river. In 1839,
Nicholas I entrusted the construction of the Grand Kremlin Palace to the
architect K. A. Ton, according to whose design the Cathedral of Christ
the Savior was being built at the same time. Construction of the
building took about ten years and was completed by 1849. Even before its
completion, the small Church of John the Baptist on Bor was dismantled,
the scale of which did not correspond to the new building. At the same
time, all the old palace buildings were dismantled, with the exception
of the Terem Palace, the Faceted and Small Golden Chambers, which were
included in the general system of the new palace. In 1844-1851,
according to Thon’s design, a new building of the Armory Chamber was
erected; the old ward was rebuilt into barracks.
In the second
half of the 19th century, no significant reconstructions were made in
the Kremlin, with the exception of the restoration by N.A. Shokhin of
the Amusement Palace, which returned the building to its 17th-century
appearance.
In 1893-1898, on the south-eastern side of the slope
of the Kremlin hill, a monument to Emperor Alexander II was built using
public funds (design by sculptor A. M. Opekushin, artist V. V. Zhukovsky
and architect N. V. Sultanov), which was solemnly opened in 1898 Emperor
Nicholas II.
In 1908, between the Senate and Arsenal buildings near
the Nikolskaya Tower, a cross-monument was erected at the site of the
death of Prince Sergei Alexandrovich. Access to the territory of the
Moscow Kremlin was free for everyone. It was customary to enter through
the Spassky Gate, bowing to the icon of the Savior. The emperor and his
family rarely visited his Moscow residence, therefore, having taken a
free ticket at the palace office, the visitor had the right to walk
through all the Kremlin palaces. Several film clips filmed in 1908 in
the Kremlin have survived: “Ivanovskaya Square”; "Arsenal. Tsar Cannon".
During the armed uprising in October - November 1917, the Kremlin,
on whose territory there were detachments of cadets, was seriously
damaged by artillery shelling carried out by the revolutionary troops.
The walls, the Spasskaya Tower and the Spassky Clock, the Nikolskaya
Tower, the Beklemishevskaya Tower, and almost all the churches on the
territory of the Kremlin were severely damaged; great damage was caused
to the Small Nicholas Palace.
The Kremlin again became the political center of the
Russian state after the Soviet government, headed by V. I. Lenin, moved
to Moscow in March 1918. Palaces and cavalry corps become its residence
and place of residence for the leaders of the Soviet state, and
therefore free access to the territory of the Kremlin for ordinary
Muscovites is prohibited. Temples are closed, and the Kremlin bells fall
silent for many years.
According to historian V.F. Kozlov, at a
meeting of the Moscow Council, the people's commissars were offered
three options for placement: the Noble Women's Institute, the Reserve
Palace at the Red Gate and the Kremlin. At a meeting of the Council of
People's Commissars there were objections to the latter, since the
territory of the Moscow Kremlin is a favorite place for Muscovites to
walk, and if the government is located there, free access will be
limited, or even stopped altogether, the closure of the Kremlin
cathedrals will cause discontent among believers and the population, and
it is not appropriate for the leaders of the Russian Republic of Soviets
to be located in the residence of the tsars, however, the chairman of
the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Ya. M. Sverdlov stopped all
debate: “Undoubtedly, the bourgeoisie and the philistines will raise a
howl - the Bolsheviks, they say, are desecrating holy places, but this
should least of all bother us. The interests of the proletarian
revolution are higher than prejudices.”
The Petrograd Collegium
for the Protection of Antique Monuments and Art Treasures sent an appeal
to the Soviet government with a call to leave the Kremlin, since “...
the occupation of the Kremlin by the government creates a monstrous
threat to the integrity of the greatest monuments in terms of their
global and exceptional significance.” This appeal (published in 1997 by
T. A. Tutova, an employee of the Kremlin museums) was not even
considered.
In 1918-1919, under the leadership of architect N.V.
Markovnikov, the restoration of the walls and towers of the Kremlin took
place; I. E. Bondarenko, I. V. Rylsky and D. P. Sukhov took part in the
work.
During the years of Soviet power, the architectural
ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin suffered significantly. The author of a
study on the destruction of Kremlin monuments during this period,
Konstantin Mikhailov, in the book “Destroyed Kremlin” writes that “in
the 20th century, the architectural ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin was
destroyed by more than half.” On the plans of the Kremlin at the
beginning of the 20th century, one can distinguish 54 structures that
stood inside the Kremlin walls. More than half of them - 28 buildings -
no longer exist. In 1918, with the personal participation of Lenin, the
monument to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was demolished. In the same
year, the monument to Alexander II was destroyed. In the mid-1920s, the
chapels at the gate icons near the Spasskaya, Nikolskaya and
Borovitskaya towers were demolished.
In 1922, during the campaign
to “seizure church valuables” from the Kremlin cathedrals, more than 300
pounds of silver, more than 2 pounds of gold, thousands of precious
stones, and even the shrine of Patriarch Hermogenes were seized from the
Assumption Cathedral. The Great Kremlin Palace began to be adapted to
host congresses of Soviets and congresses of the Third International, a
kitchen was placed in the Golden Chamber, and a public dining room was
installed in the Granovita. The Small Nicholas Palace turned into a club
for workers of Soviet institutions, it was decided to build a gym in the
Catherine Church of the Ascension Monastery, and a Kremlin hospital in
Chudov.
At the end of the 1920s, a large series of demolition of
ancient Kremlin structures began. The author of a fundamental study on
the Moscow churches “Forty Sorokov” P. G. Palamarchuk calculated that on
the eve of 1917 there were 31 churches with 51 altars in the Moscow
Kremlin. On September 17, 1928, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central
Executive Committee adopted a resolution defining the timing of the
demolition of church buildings and ancient structures of the Moscow
Kremlin. Information about the upcoming destruction of monuments reached
the Main Science of the People's Commissariat for Education only in
mid-June 1929. By that time, the Church of Saints Constantine and Helena
had already been demolished. The head of the People's Commissariat of
Education, A.V. Lunacharsky, sent a letter to the Chairman of the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive
Committee of the USSR, M.I. Kalinin, condemning the planned demolition
and the implementation of such a decision, bypassing representatives of
the scientific community. At a meeting of the Politburo, this letter was
called “anti-communist and obscene in tone.”
In 1929-1930, two
ancient Kremlin monasteries, Chudov and Voznesensky, were completely
demolished, with all the temples, churches, chapels, necropolises,
service buildings, as well as the Small Nicholas Palace adjacent to the
Chudov Monastery, where the headquarters of the defending cadets was
located. Thus, the entire eastern part of the Kremlin from Ivanovskaya
Square to the Senate Palace was completely ruins until 1932. At the end
of 1932, on the site of the destroyed monuments, a military school
building named after the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was
built in a neoclassical style. In 1933, the Church of the Annunciation
in Zhitny Dvor, attached to the Annunciation Tower in the 18th century,
was demolished. In the same year, the oldest temple in Moscow, the
Cathedral of the Savior on Bor, located in the courtyard of the Grand
Kremlin Palace, was destroyed. In 1934, a 5-story service building was
built in its place. Not even the foundations of the temple remain, with
the exception of fragments of the foundation of the western vestibule,
which was discovered in 1997. In total, during the years of Soviet
power, 17 churches with 25 altars were destroyed.
In addition to
the destruction of monuments, some buildings were altered. At the
Faceted Chamber, the “Red Porch”, the main staircase along which Russian
tsars and emperors walked to their coronation in the Assumption
Cathedral (restored in 1994), was broken. Before the revolution, the
facade of the Grand Kremlin Palace contained 5 white stone bas-reliefs
in the form of the coat of arms of Russia - a double-headed eagle - and
several more small bas-reliefs in the form of coats of arms of the
historical possessions of the Russian Empire (Moscow, Kazan, Astrakhan,
etc.). After the revolution, they were cut down, the place of the
central double-headed eagle was taken by a bas-relief in the form of the
coat of arms of the USSR, and around were the letters: “S” and “S” on
the left and “S” and “P” on the right. During the restoration of the
Grand Kremlin Palace in 1994, all the historical bas-reliefs on the
facade were recreated.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the premises on
the territory of the Moscow Kremlin were also used as residential
premises: the leaders of the Soviet state, the Communist Party, and
employees of the Kremlin commandant’s office lived in them. In 1920,
2,100 people were registered in the Kremlin; by 1935, their number had
dropped to 374 people; as of 1939, 31 people were permanently living in
the Kremlin, including I. V. Stalin, K. E. Voroshilov, V. M. Molotov, L.
M. Kaganovich, A. I. Mikoyan, M. I. Kalinin, A. A. Zhdanov, A. A.
Andreev, N. A. Voznesensky, relatives of V. I. Lenin, F. E. Dzerzhinsky,
G.K. Ordzhonikidze and others. The Kremlin was used as a place of
permanent residence until the end of the 1950s. The last person to move
from the Kremlin was K. E. Voroshilov, who lived there with his family
until 1962.
In 1935, the double-headed eagles that crowned the
main passage towers of the Kremlin: Spasskaya, Nikolskaya, Troitskaya
and Borovitskaya, were replaced with stars made of gilded copper,
covered with Ural gems. In 1937, gem stars were replaced with ruby glass
stars. The ruby star was first installed on the Vodovzvodnaya Tower.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Kremlin was camouflaged in order
to avoid its destruction. Streets and facades of other buildings were
depicted on the walls, green roofs were repainted, ruby stars were
extinguished and covered. The mausoleum was hidden under a two-story
fake building. The work was supervised by architect B. M. Iofan. The
Germans could not carry out targeted bombing of the Kremlin, since the
Kremlin had visually disappeared. During the war, 18 high-explosive
aerial bombs weighing from 50 to 500 kg and about one and a half hundred
incendiary bombs were dropped on the territory of the Kremlin and Red
Square, which did not cause catastrophic destruction.
Since 1955,
the Kremlin has been partially open to the public, becoming an open-air
museum. From the same year, a ban on living on the territory of the
Kremlin was introduced. In 1967, a monument to V. I. Lenin was unveiled
in the Kremlin (sculptor V. B. Pinchuk, architect S. B. Speransky). The
last major Kremlin structure during the years of Soviet power was the
Palace of Congresses, built in 1958-1961 according to the design of
architects M. V. Posokhin, A. A. Mndoyants, E. N. Stamo, P. P. Steller
and N. M. Shchepetilnikov . To clear space for the new building, the old
Armory Chamber, the Synodal Administration, the Officer, Kitchen and
Grenadier buildings and two of the three Cavalry buildings of the
Kremlin were demolished.
During restoration work in the late
1960s and early 1970s, clay tiles on the Kremlin towers were replaced in
many places with metal sheets painted to resemble tiles. In addition, in
connection with the construction of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
memorial, part of the surface layer of the wall between the Corner and
Middle Arsenal towers was cut down to a depth of 1 m and then laid out
again to create a surface monotonous in color and texture, designed to
serve as the background for the memorial.
In 1990, the Kremlin
was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Since 1991, the Kremlin has been the residence of the
President of Russia. In 1993-1994, the Red Porch of the Faceted Chamber
was rebuilt, and from 1994 to 1998, the Andreevsky and Alexander Halls
of the Grand Kremlin Palace were rebuilt. In 1995, the monument to V.I.
Lenin was dismantled in the Tainitsky Garden (the monument was first
transported to the Park of Arts, and later to Leninskie Gorki). From
1992 to 1996, the restoration of the Senate Palace took place.
In
1996-2000, restoration of the Kremlin walls and towers was carried out.
In 2001, renovation of the 14th building of the Kremlin on
Ivanovskaya Square began. By 2011, all services of the presidential
administration were transferred to Old Square. Interior of B.N.’s office
Yeltsin was transported to the Presidential Center named after him in
Yekaterinburg.
In July 2014, Russian President V.V. Putin made a
proposal not to restore the 14th building, which does not represent
architectural and historical value, but to recreate the historical
appearance of the Moscow Kremlin and restore ancient monasteries on this
site - Chudov, founded by Metropolitan Alexy and Voznesensky, founded
widow of Dmitry Donskoy Evdokia Dmitrievna. The proposal was discussed
at a meeting with the mayor of Moscow S. S. Sobyanin, deputy director of
the Moscow Kremlin Museums, specialist in ancient Russian architecture
A. L. Batalov, rector of the Moscow Architectural Institute D. O.
Shvidkovsky and commandant of the Moscow Kremlin S. D. Khlebnikov. The
proposal aroused keen interest among the discussion participants,
especially since the 14th building was practically dismantled several
years ago.
In the spring of 2016, the building of the 14th
building was completely dismantled. For the first time, opportunities
have opened up for a large-scale archaeological study of the Kremlin
Hill and the hidden layers of cultural and spiritual heritage of the
12th - early 20th centuries. Research work was carried out by the
Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. At the end
of the excavations, a public garden was laid out in their place while
the project for the restoration of the monasteries was being worked on.
In the winter of 2017, the first “archaeological windows” in Moscow were
opened on Ivanovskaya Square, which allow you to get acquainted with the
well-preserved ancient foundations of the Small Nicholas Palace and the
Chudov Monastery. The discovered remains of the foundations of the
Catherine Church of the Ascension Monastery are located under Spasskaya
Street and are hidden from the eyes of Kremlin visitors.
In early
May 2023, amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin was
attacked by drones. One exploded over the Senate Palace.