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Walking routes in Moscow

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      Boulevards and Patriarch’s Ponds: the big loop

      ⏱ 6 h 30 min🚶 4.7 km🍽 2📍 12 stops
      🚶 Moderate — 3–7 km

      The same route from Pushkinskaya to Patriarch’s Ponds, but with stops at Art Nouveau mansions, at Gorky’s and Yermolova’s houses, and in the Akvarium garden next to the “bad apartment”.

      🍽 Food tour🏛 History and architecture🎨 Art🌳 Parks and nature
      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps
      1. 1
        🏛 Pushkin Square
        A square on Tverskaya with a garden, fountains and Opekushin's bronze Pushkin of 1880.
        Start at the Pushkin monument
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Pushkin Square
        © Shakko · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The square was called Strastnaya, after the Passion Monastery demolished in 1937; it became Pushkinskaya in 1931.
        • The Rossiya cinema, now Pushkinsky, was built in 1961 on the monastery's site.
        • Alexander Opekushin's Pushkin monument was unveiled on Tverskoy Boulevard in 1880, and in the mid-20th century it was moved across the square.
        • The 1880 unveiling celebrations are remembered for Dostoevsky's Pushkin Speech.
        • The Izvestia building of 1927 by the architect Grigory Barkhin is a notable monument of Constructivism.
        • On 31 January 1990 the USSR's first McDonald's opened here; on the first day the queue stretched for hundreds of metres.
      2. 🚶 on foot
      3. 2
        🏛 Yeliseyev House (former Yeliseyevsky shop)
        Тверская ул., 14
        A neo-Gothic facade and display windows of 1901; the food hall itself has been closed since 2021.
        Cross Tverskaya: a neo-Gothic facade and 1901 shop windows — the food hall is closed, but the building is worth walking around
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Yeliseyev House (former Yeliseyevsky shop)
        © Mike1979 Russia · CC BY-SA 3.0
        Yeliseyev House (former Yeliseyevsky shop)
        © Aniacra · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • Grigory Yeliseyev bought the former Kozitskaya mansion in 1898; the architect Baranovsky led its conversion into a shop.
        • For three years the building stood wrapped in wooden scaffolding, and townspeople wondered what was inside; the scaffolding came down on the morning of the opening.
        • The shop opened on 23 January (5 February) 1901; Gilyarovsky described the ceremony in Moscow and Muscovites.
        • The entrance to the wine department was made from Kozitsky Lane: wine could not be sold within 100 m of a church, and the Strastnoy Monastery stood 90 m away.
        • The display of goods in pyramids, later copied by many shops, was Yeliseyev's idea.
        • From the 1920s the shop was officially called Gastronom No. 1.
        • In the early 1980s, in the "Yeliseyevsky case", the shop's director Sokolov was sentenced to death.
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        🍽 Café Pushkin
        Тверской б-р, 26А
        ▮▮▮▮▮
        Breakfast or lunch in a nobleman’s mansion
        🍴 A restaurant of Russian aristocratic cuisine in an old-style mansion on Tverskoy Boulevard, open since 1999. What to order: beef stroganoff with Pushkin potatoes, a Pozharsky cutlet with mushroom sauce, dumplings with three kinds of meat.
      6. 🚶 on foot
      7. 4
        🚶 Tverskoy Boulevard
        A long, wide boulevard of lime trees and lawns between Pushkin Square and Nikitskiye Vorota, passing the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre.
        The oldest boulevard in Moscow
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Tverskoy Boulevard
        © Valeri Pizhanski from Odintsovo, Russia · CC BY-SA 2.0
        Tverskoy Boulevard
        © Perituss · CC0
        • The boulevard was laid out in summer 1796; it is the oldest and longest boulevard of the Boulevard Ring, almost 900 m.
        • At first it was simply called "the Boulevard": there were no other boulevards in Moscow then.
        • In 1812 French soldiers cut down almost all the boulevard's trees for firewood.
        • Opekushin's Pushkin monument stood at the end of the boulevard from 1880, and in 1950 it was moved to the other side of the square.
        • Alexander Herzen was born in 1812 at No. 25; it now houses the Gorky Literary Institute.
        • RAPP and MAPP, which met in Herzen's house in the 1920s, became the prototype of Bulgakov's MASSOLIT.
        • Sergey Merkurov's monument to Timiryazev (1923) was knocked off its pedestal by a blast wave in 1941 and later restored.
        • In 1960 the World Chess Championship match was held in the building of the former Tairov Kamerny Theatre, now the Pushkin Theatre.
      8. 🚶 on foot
      9. 5
        🖼 Yermolova House Museum (branch of the Bakhrushin Museum)
        Тверской б-р, 11
        🎟 ticket
        A mansion on Tverskoy Boulevard where the actress spent the last decades of her life; her apartment and drawing rooms are preserved.
        The great actress’s mansion right on the boulevard — drop in for an hour (Tue–Sun from 11:00, closed Mon), with its 19th-century interiors preserved
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Yermolova House Museum (branch of the Bakhrushin Museum)
        © Shakko · CC BY-SA 3.0
        • The house was built in late 1773; in the 19th century the owners changed often and rebuilt it, and after 1873 its look was no longer changed.
        • In 1889 the mansion was bought by the lawyer Nikolai Shubinsky, Yermolova's husband.
        • Maria Yermolova, an actress of the Maly Theatre, lived here from 1889 to 1928.
        • The museum apartment opened on 15 May 1970, and the house museum in 1986.
        • The main curiosity is the diorama "Teatralnaya Square in the 1870s" by Yefim Deshalyt.
        • The White Hall hosts concerts, performances and creative evenings.
      10. 🚶 on foot
      11. 6
        🏛 Nikitskiye Vorota
        A square at the junction of boulevards with a rotunda fountain of Pushkin and Goncharova and the Empire-style Church of the Great Ascension.
        The Church of the Great Ascension, where Pushkin was married
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Nikitskiye Vorota
        © Ludvig14 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The square is named after the Nikitsky Gate of the White City and the Nikitsky Monastery, which was demolished in the 1930s.
        • In 1831 Pushkin and Natalia Goncharova were married in the Church of the Great Ascension at Nikitskiye Vorota.
        • The rotunda fountain Natalia and Alexander, with figures of the newlyweds, was installed in 1999, for Pushkin's 200th anniversary.
        • Sergey Merkurov's monument to Kliment Timiryazev has stood on the square since 1923.
        • Mark Rozovsky's U Nikitskikh Vorot Theatre grew out of a studio he founded in 1983.
        • The TASS building at the corner of Tverskoy Boulevard is a recognisable late Soviet modernist structure of the 1970s.
      12. 🚶 on foot
      13. 7
        🖼 Ryabushinsky Mansion (Gorky Museum)
        ул. Малая Никитская, 6/2
        🎟 ticket
        A Shekhtel mansion of 1900 with a wave-like staircase, stained glass and mosaics.
        Shekhtel’s Ryabushinsky Mansion — for its wave-shaped staircase; Gorky’s house-museum is open Wed–Sun
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Ryabushinsky Mansion (Gorky Museum)
        © Alexxx1979 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Ryabushinsky Mansion (Gorky Museum)
        © Ted.ns · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • Shekhtel built the house in 1900–1903 for Stepan Ryabushinsky, whose icon collection was considered the largest in Russia.
        • In 1921–1925 an experimental psychoanalytic kindergarten operated here, attended by Stalin's son Vasily.
        • Maxim Gorky, who moved in here in 1931, called the mansion a "ridiculous house".
        • At meetings of Stalin and Gorky with writers here in October 1932, the term "socialist realism" was discussed and given meaning.
        • During restoration in the mid-1970s a bulky eavesdropping device was found in a wall.
        • The windows of the four floors look identical but get smaller toward the top, which makes the house look taller.
        • The basement kitchen was connected to the dining room by a lift so that dishes reached the table instantly.
        • Gorky's library in the mansion has 12,000 volumes.
      14. 🚶 on foot
      15. 8
        🏛 Zinaida Morozova's Mansion
        ул. Спиридоновка, 17
        A Shekhtel mansion of 1893 in the Neo-Gothic style with turrets and pointed windows.
        Along Spiridonovka to Zinaida Morozova’s Gothic castle — no entry inside, so look at the fence and turrets
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Zinaida Morozova's Mansion
        © Vzorets · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Zinaida Morozova's Mansion
        © Shakko · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • Shekhtel was expelled from school for skipping classes, and for this commission he took his exams as an external student; formally Ivan Kuznetsov supervised the construction.
        • More than 600 drawings were made for the house, and the interiors were designed by the then little-known Mikhail Vrubel.
        • Savva Morozov hid the revolutionary Nikolai Bauman from the police here, and Bauman slept in the billiard room.
        • In the 1920s a collection of Mikhail Ryabushinsky was found in a hiding place behind a cabinet: paintings by Serov, Vrubel, Repin and a bust by Rodin.
        • Since 1938 it has been the Foreign Ministry's Reception House; in 1943 the Moscow Declaration of the USSR, USA and Great Britain was signed in the mansion.
        • A fire in August 1995 destroyed 70% of the decor, and the interiors were restored from Shekhtel's photographs and drawings.
      16. 🚶 on foot
      17. 9
        🖼 Bulgakov Museum (the "Bad Apartment")
        Б. Садовая ул., 10
        🎟 ticket
        The Art Nouveau Pigit apartment building where Bulgakov lived in 1921–1924 and from which he "moved" Woland and his retinue into the novel.
        The “bad apartment” No. 50
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Bulgakov Museum (the "Bad Apartment")
        © Никонико962 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The apartment building was built in 1902–1903 for the tobacco manufacturer Ilya Pigit, owner of the Dukat factory.
        • Bulgakov lived here from 1921 to 1924, at first in Apartment No. 50, which became the "bad apartment" of The Master and Margarita.
        • In the novel the building is called "302-bis Sadovaya".
        • In autumn 1921, in the studio of the artist Georgy Yakulov in this building, Yesenin met Isadora Duncan.
        • The artist Pyotr Konchalovsky also had a studio in the building.
        • Two museums operate in the stairwell: the state museum in Apartment No. 50 and the private Bulgakov House on the ground floor.
        • For years the stairwell walls were covered with inscriptions and drawings by fans of the novel.
      18. 🚶 on foot
      19. 10
        🌳 Aquarium Garden by the Mossovet Theatre
        Б. Садовая ул., 16
        A cosy historic garden of the late 19th century where summer plays and concerts were once staged.
        Across the road from the “bad apartment” — sit by the fountains before the ponds
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Aquarium Garden by the Mossovet Theatre
        © Табуретка · CC BY-SA 3.0
        • In 1892 the First Moscow Electrical Exhibition, opened by Savva Mamontov, was held on the site; about 100,000 people visited it.
        • The garden, opened by the impresario Mikhail Lentovsky on 1 July 1893, was first called “Chicago”, after the World's Fair then under way.
        • The garden got the name “Aquarium” in 1898 under the Frenchman Charles Aumont, apparently modelled on the garden of the same name in St Petersburg.
        • Zimin's private opera began here, and Vera Komissarzhevskaya performed here in 1903.
        • In 1903 an athletics championship took place in the garden, where in the final, a nearly 25-minute bout, Ivan Poddubny beat Petrov.
        • In 1910–1912 the winter theatre building housed a skating rink, and at one time an aquarium stood in one of the pavilions.
      20. 🚶 on foot
      21. 11
        🌳 Patriarch's Ponds (Patriarshiye Prudy)
        A square pond surrounded by old lime trees and benches, a calm park amid quiet lanes and the setting of The Master and Margarita.
        Sit on that very bench
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Patriarch's Ponds (Patriarshiye Prudy)
        © Dimа · CC BY-SA 3.0
        Patriarch's Ponds (Patriarshiye Prudy)
        © Shuvaev · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Patriarch's Ponds (Patriarshiye Prudy)
        © Gennady Grachev from Moscow, Russia · CC BY 2.0
        • In 1683 Patriarch Joachim ordered the local Goat Marsh drained and three fish ponds dug.
        • After the fire of 1812 two ponds were filled in and one remained; Trekhprudny Lane recalls the three.
        • From 1932 to 1992 the pond was officially called Pionersky ("Pioneer").
        • The 1976 Krylov monument (sculptors Andrei Drevin and Daniel Mitlyansky) is surrounded by scenes from 12 fables.
        • The stone pavilion by the water was built in 1986 on the site of a wooden one from 1938.
        • The Master and Margarita begins here; the sign banning talking to strangers refers to the novel's first chapter.
        • A skating rink has been flooded on the pond since 1900, with an area of about 12,000 m².
      22. 🚶 on foot
      23. 12
        🍽 Aist restaurant
        ул. Малая Бронная, 8/1
        ▮▮▮▮▯
        Dinner on Malaya Bronnaya
        🍴 Arkady Novikov's restaurant by Patriarch's Ponds: an Italian menu, a bakery and brunches. What to order: oven-baked pizza, pasta with chanterelles, honey cake, Bird's Milk cake.

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