Palms, an animal clock and a family café

⏱ 3 h🚶 2.7 km + 🚕🍽 1📍 3 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

A route for a damp October day: tropics in the Apothecary Garden greenhouse, the clock at the Obraztsov Theatre and a warm play area at AnderSon.

👶 With kids🌳 Parks and nature☔️ If it rains

👶 under 3, 3–6 years · ✓ stroller-friendly

Prospekt Mira and Sukharevskaya have no lifts — take a taxi. The greenhouses have narrow paths: it's easier to carry the baby in a sling. Cross Olimpiysky Prospekt by the surface crossing.

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps (with transit)

1
🌳 Apothecaries' Garden (Aptekarsky Ogorod)
пр-т Мира, 26, стр. 1
🚪 entrance from Prospekt Mira
🎟 ticket
Russia's oldest botanical garden, founded under Peter I, with a pond, greenhouses and centuries-old trees.
A taxi is easier here. From opening at 10:00 go to the Palm Greenhouse: +25 and humid, the baby often falls asleep. Take off jackets beforehand. On the first Monday of the month the Palm House has its cleaning day.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© MBH · CC BY 4.0
- The garden was founded in 1706, when the state garden of medicinal plants was moved here from beneath the Kremlin walls.
- Peter I planted a spruce, a fir and a larch here himself; according to legend, one larch survives to this day.
- The first director in 1735–1742 was the botanist Traugott Gerber, after whom the gerbera flower is named.
- In 1805 Moscow University bought the garden for 11,000 silver roubles.
- The Palm Greenhouse was built in 1891.
- The white willow growing here is considered the oldest tree in central Moscow.
🚕 taxi, about 5 min along the Garden Ring, or about 15-20 min on foot
2
✨ Obraztsov Puppet Theatre and the animal clock
Садовая-Самотёчная ул., 3
🎟 partly ticketed · the animal clock is free, performances require a ticket
The country's main puppet theater on the Garden Ring, with a famous fairy-tale clock on its facade and a puppet museum.
Arrive by noon: at 12:00 the clock on the facade opens all twelve little windows with animals. It's best to watch from the opposite side of Samotyochnaya, from under the canopy.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Чръный человек · CC BY 4.0
- The facade clock was made in 1970 to a design by the sculptors Dmitry Shakhovskoy and Pavel Shimes; the mechanism was designed by Veniamin Kalmanson.
- Every hour one of the 12 little houses opens and a fairy-tale character comes out to the tune of "Vo sadu li, v ogorode", and at exactly noon all 12 open.
- The theater was founded in 1931; in its first years it had no stage of its own, and sets were carried on a cart pulled by a gelding named Kater.
- The building on the Garden Ring was originally built for Stanislavsky's Opera and Drama Theatre; construction was stopped and the building was reworked for the puppeteers by 1970.
- The 1950 show "An Unusual Concert" has been performed more than 10,000 times in over 90 countries.
- During the war the theater sent 16 concert brigades to the front, which gave 328 performances.
- The theatrical puppet museum has more than 4,000 exhibits, from antiquity to the present day.
- Since 2006 a bronze monument to Sergey Obraztsov with his favorite puppet Carmen has stood by the theater.
🚶 on foot
3
☕️ AnderSon family café on Gilyarovskogo · 🧸 play area
ул. Гиляровского, 39, стр. 3
▮▮▮▯▯
Lunch and a play area for toddlers with a ball pit. There are kids' porridges, soups and "Bunny" syrniki, high chairs and a changing table; at weekends book a table by the play area.
🍴 A family café-pastry shop by Prospekt Mira with a free play room for little ones: a ball pit, soft building blocks and a cartoon room. What to order: the signature syrniki (fried curd pancakes) with raspberry puree and sour cream, kids' "Bunny Syrniki", homemade blini.