Novodevichy Pond, Usachevsky Market and Trubetskoy Park

⏱ 1 h 10 min🚶 1.9 km🍽 2📍 4 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

A flat loop by the pond with a view of the convent, lunch at the market's food court and a quiet hour in the shady park of an old estate, where there are hardly any cars.

👶 With kids🌳 Parks and nature⏱ An hour or so

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

Sportivnaya and Frunzenskaya have no lifts — better to get to the pond by taxi or trolleybus along Bolshaya Pirogovskaya. All crossings on the way are at street level and the paths are paved.

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps

1
🌳 Novodevichy Pond
A pond by the convent walls reflecting the bell tower and the Smolensk Cathedral, with a path and benches around it.
It's easier to come here by taxi. A flat loop around the pond with a view of the convent, and ducks by the water. The playground is on the north shore, on the Novodevichy Proyezd side; on weekdays before 11 a.m. there's almost no one there.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Pierre André Leclercq · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Alexxx1979 · CC0
- The ponds lie in an oxbow of the Moskva River, and the park around them began to be laid out under a plan of 1957.
- The sculpture Make Way for Ducklings is a copy of Nancy Schön's Boston composition, based on Robert McCloskey's book.
- The ducklings were given to Soviet children in 1991 by Barbara Bush, who a year earlier had shown the Boston original to Raisa Gorbacheva.
- The ducklings have been stolen more than once: one right after installation, and later the mother duck and several others; the figures were recast.
- Above the pond stands Novodevichy Convent, founded in 1524, which has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2004.
🚶 on foot
2
🧺 Usachevsky Market
ул. Усачёва, 26
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Lunch at the second-floor food court: it's easy to find soup, mash or porridge for a toddler, and pinsa and crab shawarma for adults. Go up by lift; the toilet is on the same floor.
🍴 A market in Khamovniki with farmers' stalls and a food court on the second floor. What to order: shawarma with Kamchatka crab at Crab and Caviar, pinsa at Pinzeria by Bontempi, a sprat sandwich and a fruit liqueur at Pod Usami.
🚶 on foot
3
🌳 Children's Park “Trubetskoy Estate in Khamovniki”
ул. Усачёва, 1
🚪 entrance from Trubetskaya Street
The park of the former Trubetskoy estate with a pond and a main house: the authentic wooden house burned down in 2001, and a concrete copy was built in its place in 2002.
Nap time: in the old estate park there are few cars and lots of shade, and a baby sleeps peacefully in the stroller along the avenues around the pond. Once awake, visit the petting corner and the horses at the children's riding school (by schedule).
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Anirina · CC BY-SA 3.0
- The first mention of the village of Sadki that stood here dates to 1683, when Prince Vasily Golitsyn received the land.
- Under Nikita Trubetskoy two ponds were dug in the garden; the larger one has a complex shape, with islets and rotunda gazebos.
- According to the historian Mikhail Pogodin, Alexander Pushkin visited Trubetskoy's estate after the coronation celebrations of Nicholas I.
- The park is called “Mandelstam Park”, but after the revolutionary Alexander Mandelstam, secretary of the Khamovniki district committee in 1921–1922, not the poet.
- In 1936 Moscow's first children's park opened here, with a theatre, a stage and a “military town”.
- The old wooden house burned down in 2001, and a concrete copy was built in its place in 2002.
🚶 on foot
4
🍽 Ribambelle family restaurant in Khamovniki · 🧸 play area
Оболенский пер., 9, корп. 1
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About 250 m from the Trubetskoy Estate children's park. They work with small children here too, and there are high chairs. The café is small (about 50 seats), so it's worth booking on weekends.
🍴 A family restaurant where an entertainer or nanny looks after the children in the play room, toddlers included. Try: breakfasts until 13:00, borscht, and dishes from the kids' menu, served not too hot.