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Walking routes in Moscow

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      All day: the seven hills of old Moscow

      ⏱ 11 h🚶 8 km + 🚇🍽 3📍 13 stops
      🏃 A lot — over 7 km

      Up and down the hills Moscow grew on: from Borovitsky with the Kremlin via Ivanovskaya and Shvivaya hills to Sretensky and Tverskoy.

      🏛 History and architecture
      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps (with transit)
      1. 1
        ☕️ Bosco Café in GUM
        Красная пл., 3, ГУМ, 1-я линия
        ▮▮▮▮▯
        Breakfast: with a view of Red Square, come early
        🍴 An Italian café on the first line of GUM with windows onto Red Square. What to order: syrniki (cottage-cheese pancakes) with berries, blini with homemade cottage cheese or porridge for breakfast, gelato from the Bosco kiosk.
      2. 🚶 on foot
      3. 2
        🏛 Red Square
        The country's main square, paved with cobblestones, between the Kremlin, GUM, the State Historical Museum and St Basil's Cathedral.
        From here you can see how Borovitsky Hill drops away to the river
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Red Square
        © Юрий Д.К. · CC BY 4.0
        Red Square
        © Олег Токарев · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Red Square
        © Leokand · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The name "Red" ("beautiful") stuck to the square in the second half of the 17th century; before that it was called Torg ("the Market") and Pozhar ("the Burnt Place").
        • The square measures about 330 by 75 metres.
        • In 1990 Red Square, together with the Kremlin, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.
        • The Lobnoye Mesto is mentioned from 1549; contrary to legend, executions were usually held not on it but next to it.
        • The Minin and Pozharsky monument by Ivan Martos was unveiled in 1818 and moved to St Basil's Cathedral in 1931.
        • GUM, formerly the Upper Trading Rows, was built in 1890–1893 to a design by Alexander Pomerantsev.
        • The present granite Lenin Mausoleum was built to a design by Alexey Shchusev in 1930.
        • On 7 November 1941 troops leaving the parade marched from here straight to the front.
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        🏛 Kremlin Cathedral Square
        🎟 ticket · entry to the Kremlin requires a ticket
        The Kremlin's main square, with white-stone cathedrals of the 15th–16th centuries and the Ivan the Great Bell Tower.
        Borovitsky Hill is the main one of the seven; buy tickets on kreml.ru in advance, the Kremlin is closed on Thursdays
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Kremlin Cathedral Square
        © szeke · CC BY-SA 2.0
        • In 1474 the almost finished Dormition Cathedral collapsed after an earthquake, and Ivan III invited Aristotele Fioravanti from Italy.
        • Fioravanti built the new Dormition Cathedral in four years; Russian princes and tsars were crowned here.
        • The Archangel Cathedral holds 46 tombs and 54 burials, almost all the Moscow princes and tsars up to Peter I.
        • The Ivan the Great Bell Tower was erected in 1505 to a design by the Italian Bon Fryazin on the site of the Church of St John Climacus.
        • The Dormition belfry holds the working Dormition Bell, weighing more than 65 tonnes.
        • The Palace of Facets, with a throne hall resting on a single pillar, was laid down in 1487 by the Italian master Marco Fryazin.
        • In 1812 the retreating French blew up the belfry by Ivan the Great; it was restored in 1814–1815.
        • In 1990 the Kremlin, together with Red Square, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list.
      6. 🚶 on foot
      7. 4
        🚶 Varvarka Street
        A short ancient street in Kitay-gorod with a string of churches, the Old English Court and the Romanov boyars' chambers on the slope down to the river.
        Pskovskaya Gorka: the descent to Zaryadye past 17th-century churches
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Varvarka Street
        © Alexxx1979 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Varvarka Street
        © Alexxx1979 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Varvarka Street
        © Alexxx1979 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The street is named after the Church of St Barbara; the present building was built in 1796–1804 by the architect Rodion Kazakov.
        • From 1933 to 1990 the street was called Razin Street; tradition says Stepan Razin was taken along it to his execution in 1671.
        • According to tradition, Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich was born in the Romanov boyars' chambers; a museum opened here in 1859, one of the first in Moscow.
        • Ivan the Terrible gave the 16th-century Old English Court to the English merchants of the Muscovy Company in 1556.
        • The street still has the churches of Maxim the Blessed and of George on Pskovskaya Hill, and the 17th-century Znamensky Monastery.
        • The south side of the street was occupied by the Rossiya Hotel until 2006; Zaryadye Park opened on its site in 2017.
      8. 🚶 on foot
      9. 5
        🏛 Ivanovsky Convent on Ivanovskaya Gorka
        A convent behind high walls on a hillside, with a 19th-century cathedral and a quiet courtyard.
        Ivanovskaya Gorka: steeply uphill along Zabelin Street, the best view is from the monastery gates
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Ivanovsky Convent on Ivanovskaya Gorka
        © Carbonkidka · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The convent was founded in the 15th century in Zamoskvorechye, and in the 1530s it was moved here, to Kulishki, and made a convent for women.
        • In the 17th century the wives of Tsar Vasily Shuisky and of Tsarevich Ivan were held here.
        • In 1812 the convent was plundered and burned, after which it was abolished.
        • The current Neo-Renaissance ensemble was built to a design by Mikhail Bykovsky and consecrated in 1879.
        • In the 1920s there was a concentration camp here, the "Ivanovsky Correctional House", which held up to 400 prisoners at once.
      10. 🚶 on foot
      11. 6
        🏛 Khitrovskaya Square
        A small square-park on the slope of Ivanovskaya Gorka, on the site of the famous 19th-century flophouse market.
        Moscow's former most fearsome market, a descent into the lowland by the Yauza
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Khitrovskaya Square
        © Roman Balabin · CC BY-SA 3.0
        • The square was laid out at his own expense and given to the city in 1824 by Major General Nikolai Khitrovo, hence the name.
        • In 1902 Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko came here to study the life of the flophouse residents for their staging of The Lower Depths.
        • The flophouses in the Yaroshenko, Bunin, Kulakov and Rumyantsev houses faced the square.
        • The image of Khitrovka at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries was preserved in the books of Vladimir Gilyarovsky.
        • In 1935 the square and the lane were named after Gorky; the lane's historic name was restored in 1994.
        • The current park appeared after a 1930s school building was demolished in 2010.
      12. 🚶 on foot
      13. 7
        🏛 Kotelnicheskaya Embankment skyscraper
        A residential Stalinist skyscraper at the confluence of the Yauza and the Moskva River, 176 m tall, with three wings and a spire.
        The foot of Shvivaya Gorka: walk around the skyscraper from the Yauza side
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Kotelnicheskaya Embankment skyscraper
        © Ludvig14 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Kotelnicheskaya Embankment skyscraper
        © Safa.daneshvar · CC BY 4.0
        • The first block along Kotelnicheskaya Embankment was built as early as 1938–1940, and the high-rise part in 1948–1952.
        • The authors were Dmitry Chechulin and Andrei Rostkovsky; Chechulin, after falling out of favour, also received a flat in this building.
        • Originally the building had 540 flats.
        • Faina Ranevskaya, Galina Ulanova, Alexander Tvardovsky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Vasily Aksyonov lived here.
        • The Galina Ulanova apartment museum, opened in 2004, operates in the building.
        • The cinema in the building received the name Illyuzion in 1966 and began showing films from the State Film Fund.
      14. 🚶 on foot
      15. 8
        🚶 Goncharnaya Sloboda (Potters' Quarter)
        A quiet district on a hill beyond Taganka with 17th-century churches and the low-rise buildings of the former potters.
        The climb up Shvivaya Gorka through the potters' lanes
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Goncharnaya Sloboda (Potters' Quarter)
        © Lodo27 from Moscow, Russia · CC BY-SA 3.0
        Goncharnaya Sloboda (Potters' Quarter)
        © Ludvig14 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • In the 16th century the potters were moved out beyond the Yauza, to Shvivaya (then Vshivaya) Hill, farther from the Kremlin because of the danger of fire.
        • The potters' workshops were first excavated in 1947–1948 while a pit was being dug for the skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya.
        • In 1667 Belarusian tile-makers from the Resurrection Monastery on the Istra were moved to the settlement.
        • From the 18th century the former settlement was built up with noblemen's estates and the houses of Old Believer merchants.
        • A memorial sign with a clock on Goncharnaya Embankment, by the Bolshoy Krasnokholmsky Bridge, recalls the settlement.
      16. 🚶 on foot
      17. 9
        ☕️ Starik Khinkalych khinkali house
        ул. Верхняя Радищевская, 13, стр. 2
        ▮▮▯▯▯
        Lunch: khinkali and khachapuri after the steepest climbs of the day
        🍴 An inexpensive Georgian khinkali house five minutes from Bunker-42 and Taganskaya metro. What to order: lamb khinkali (Georgian dumplings), mini khinkali in pepper sauce, crispy aubergine salad, Adjarian khachapuri.
      18. 🚇 5 min on foot to Taganskaya metro, Ring Line to Kurskaya (1 stop), change to Chkalovskaya, light green line to Sretensky Bulvar (1 stop), 8 min on foot
      19. 10
        🏛 Sretensky Monastery
        A 14th-century monastery on Lubyanka with the Church of the Presentation of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God and a seminary behind its walls.
        Sretensky Hill: step into the new cathedral
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Sretensky Monastery
        © Mike1979 Russia · CC BY-SA 3.0
        Sretensky Monastery
        © Андрей Колычев · CC BY 3.0
        • The monastery was founded in 1397 by Grand Prince Vasily I in memory of Moscow's deliverance from Tamerlane in 1395.
        • The name comes from sretenie, meaning "meeting": this is where Muscovites met the Vladimir Icon brought from Vladimir.
        • The Cathedral of the Presentation of the Vladimir Icon was built in 1679 under Feodor Alexeyevich, with murals from 1707.
        • In 1925 the monastery was closed, some buildings were demolished and the bells were sold to England.
        • The monastery was revived in the 1990s; from 1995 it was headed by Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov).
        • The Church of the Resurrection of Christ and the New Martyrs, about 60 m tall, was consecrated by Patriarch Kirill on 25 May 2017.
        • The Sretensky Theological Seminary has operated at the monastery since 2002.
      20. 🚶 on foot
      21. 11
        🚶 Petrovsky Boulevard
        A short boulevard between Trubnaya and Petrovskiye Vorota, with lindens and mansions on both sides.
        Down into the Neglinka valley and up again — the boulevard follows the change in height
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Petrovsky Boulevard
        © Mike1979 Russia · CC BY-SA 3.0
        • The boulevard was laid out in the early 19th century on the site of the White City walls, demolished in the 1780s.
        • In the fire of 1812 the houses and trees on the boulevard burned, and it was restored only in 1818.
        • House no. 14/29 held Lucien Olivier's Hermitage restaurant; today the building houses the School of Modern Play theatre.
        • In house no. 5 the composer Reinhold Glière wrote the music for the first Soviet ballet, The Red Poppy, in 1926–1927.
        • The cast-iron fence and the vases on granite pedestals at the Trubnaya entrance were installed in 1947.
      22. 🚶 on foot
      23. 12
        🏛 Pushkin Square
        A square on Tverskaya with a garden, fountains and Opekushin's bronze Pushkin of 1880.
        Tverskoy Hill: the summit of the seventh hill, 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.
      24. 🚶 on foot
      25. 13
        🍽 Aist restaurant
        ул. Малая Бронная, 8/1
        ▮▮▮▮▯
        Dinner: book a table for a weekend evening in advance
        🍴 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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