The Covered Bridge, the lower embankment and the evening park

⏱ 55 min🚶 1.4 km🍽 1📍 4 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

Across Andreyevsky Bridge under its roof, along the lower tier of Pushkin Embankment, lamplit and carless, to a quiet colonnade by the river. You can finish with dinner.

🌙 Evening🎨 Art🌳 Parks and nature⏱ An hour or so

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps

1
🌅 Andreevsky Bridge
A 1907 arched railway bridge moved here in 1999–2000, with a covered glass gallery above the Moskva River.
Cross the river by the bridge's covered gallery — there's no draught under the roof even in November. From the middle you see the river bend toward Luzhniki and the dark slopes of Neskuchny Garden; the bridge's arches are lit in the evening.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© A.Savin · FAL 1.3
© Юрий Д.К. · CC BY 4.0
© A.Savin · FAL 1.3
- Officially the bridge is called Pushkinsky, but most maps and reference books list it as Andreevsky.
- The old bridge's main arch, weighing about 1,500 tonnes, was brought here on three barges on 22 May 1999; the towing took an hour and a half.
- The original bridge was built in 1905–1907 for the Moscow Little Ring Railway to a design by the engineer L. D. Proskuryakov and the architect A. N. Pomerantsev.
- At first the bridge was called Sergievsky, in memory of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and in 1917 it was renamed after the neighbouring Andreevsky Monastery.
- The span of the crescent-shaped arch is 135 m.
🚶 on foot
2
🚶 Pushkinskaya Embankment
Пушкинская наб., от Крымского моста до Андреевского моста (Парк Горького и Нескучный сад)
🆓 free entry
A pedestrian two-tier embankment of Gorky Park and Neskuchny Garden: the lower tier right at the water, an avenue with lamps above.
Go down to the lower tier right by the water and walk toward the centre: after sunset the embankment is lamplit, and there are no cars here at all.
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© Sergey A. Demidov · CC BY 4.0
© Gennady Grachev from Moscow, Russia · CC BY 2.0
- Until 1922 the embankment was called Aleksandrinskaya, and in 1922–1937 Neskuchnaya.
- It got Pushkin's name in 1937, for the 100th anniversary of the poet's death: in summer 1830 he walked in Neskuchny Garden with his fiancée Natalya Goncharova.
- The two-tier embankment with niches for benches and staircases was designed in 1937 by architect A. V. Vlasov.
- Two white-stone gazebos by the water were built to a design by Matvey Kazakov at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries.
- The embankment is pedestrian all along — no cars here.
🚶 on foot
3
🌳 Gorky Park
A big central park along the Moskva River with fountains, lawns, cafés, rentals and a skating rink in winter.
The park is open round the clock, and the avenues are lit in the evening. The fountains have been off since mid-October — but the colonnade by the river is quiet and empty.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© A.Savin · FAL 1.3
© A.Savin · FAL 1.3
- The park opened on 12 August 1928 on the site of the 1923 All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition, whose layout was designed by Konstantin Melnikov.
- The park received Maxim Gorky's name in 1932.
- On its very first day the park was visited by more than 100,000 people.
- The main entrance arch was built in 1955 to a design by the architect Georgy Shchuko.
- In the 1930s the park had an amusement parachute tower.
- In spring 1943 captured German equipment was displayed here, including the first Tiger tank taken in working order.
- From 1993 to 2014 a 50-tonne mock-up of the Buran spacecraft stood in the park.
🚶 on foot
4
🍽 Syrovarnya in Gorky Park
ул. Крымский Вал, 9, стр. 1
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Dinner by the main entrance, until midnight: cheeses from their own cheese dairy, pizza, pasta. Book on weekend evenings.
🍴 A restaurant with its own cheese dairy at the entrance to Gorky Park. What to order: pizza with mortadella and stracciatella, burrata salad, cheeks with mashed potatoes, currant fruit drink (mors).