The circus on Tsvetnoy

⏱ 4 h🚶 1.2 km🍽 2📍 4 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

A matinee at the Nikulin Circus, the boulevard and lunch at a food market.

👶 With kids☔️ If it rains

👶 3–6, 7–12 years · ✓ stroller-friendly

Tsvetnoy Boulevard is level. At the circus, strollers are checked into the cloakroom. To the Central Market there's a surface crossing.

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps

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🚶 Tsvetnoy Boulevard
A short boulevard with a small park and a fountain between the Garden Ring and Trubnaya Square; the circus and the Central Market are nearby.
The monument to Nikulin and his Cadillac
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Roman Balabin · CC BY-SA 3.0
- The boulevard follows the bed of the Neglinnaya: in 1819 the river was put into an underground pipe.
- The name comes from the flower market that worked here from 1851; before that the boulevard was called Trubny.
- The Mir concert hall (no. 11) occupies an octagonal building of 1881 built for showing panoramas.
- The poet Valery Bryusov lived in mansion no. 22 in 1878–1910.
- On Tsvetnoy Boulevard the Vayner brothers set the murder of detective Vasya Vekshin in "The Era of Mercy".
🚶 on foot
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✨ Nikulin Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard
Цветной б-р, 13
🎟 ticket · performances require tickets
Moscow's oldest circus, operating since 1880: a classic program with acrobats, clowns and trained animals.
Matinee tickets in advance
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© karel291 · CC BY 3.0
- The circus was founded by the equestrian Albert Salamonsky; the first show took place on 12 October 1880.
- Salamonsky came up with the idea of children's circus shows and Christmas trees.
- The clown Karandash performed here from 1936.
- Yuri Nikulin got into the second intake of the clown studio opened at the circus in 1946; he ran the circus from 1983, and it has borne his name since 1996.
- In 1985 the old building was taken down; the new one was built by the Finnish company Polar, preserving the look of the facade and the auditorium.
- The auditorium seats 2,000, the dome is 25 meters high and the ring is 13 meters in diameter.
- Since 2000 a monument to Nikulin by Rukavishnikov has stood at the entrance, with the convertible from "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style".
🚶 on foot
3
🍽 Osteria Gini restaurant · 🧸 play area
1-й Колобовский пер., 11 (цокольный этаж)
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It's 4 minutes from the circus along Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Kolobovsky Lane. The restaurant is in the basement — there will be steps with a stroller, so call ahead and check whether the children's room works on weekdays.
🍴 An Italian osteria five minutes from the circus with a kids' room (educational toys, chalkboards, books) and a kids' menu. Try: pizza, pasta, mussels, steak; for kids, dishes from the kids' menu.
🚶 on foot
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🧺 Tsentralny Market
Рождественский б-р, 1
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Lunch at the food market across the road
🍴 A food hall on Trubnaya: around fifty corners with cuisines from around the world, and music in the evenings. What to order: pho bo at PhoBo, tom yum at Tom Yam, pinsa at Pinzeria by Bontempi, khinkali (Georgian dumplings) at Gruziny Zdes.