Stars and animals: the Planetarium and the Zoo

⏱ 5 h🚶 4 km🍽 2📍 4 stops

🚶 Moderate — 3–7 km

A day with a child near Barrikadnaya: the interactive Lunarium, then elephants and polar bears.

👶 With kids

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

The planetarium has steps at the entrance, but also lifts and platform lifts — press the call button by the entrance. A stroller for a child under 3 is not allowed into all halls; there is a stroller parking area in the courtyard. The zoo's paths are passable. The old and new territories are linked by a wide pedestrian bridge with ramps, and there is a lift at the entrance from the Barrikadnaya side. In cramped pavilions (the Night World, the elephant house) leave the stroller at the entrance.

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps

1
🖼 Moscow Planetarium
Садовая-Кудринская ул., 5, стр. 1
🎟 ticket
One of the world's oldest planetariums, opened in 1929, with a domed star hall and interactive exhibits.
A show in the Large Star Hall + the Lunarium
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Sergey A. Demidov · CC BY 4.0
- The 1927–1929 building was designed by the Constructivist architects Mikhail Barshch and Mikhail Sinyavsky.
- The planetarium opened on 5 November 1929 and was then the only one in the country and the thirteenth in the world.
- The projector for the first star hall was made by Germany's Carl Zeiss.
- In 1994 the building was declared unsafe, and the planetarium reopened only on 12 June 2011.
- The dome of the Great Star Hall is 25 m in diameter, and the projector shows more than 9,000 celestial bodies.
- In the 1950s apartment blocks on Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya hid the planetarium from the street, so the dome is visible only through a narrow gap between them.
- Inside are the interactive Lunarium museum, the Urania museum with meteorites, and the Sky Park with instruments in the open air.
🚶 on foot
2
✨ Moscow Zoo
Б. Грузинская ул., 1
🎟 ticket
Russia's oldest zoo, from 1864, on two sites linked by a pedestrian bridge over the street.
The old and new territories — be sure to see the Exotarium
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© A.Savin · FAL 1.3
© AlixSaz · CC BY-SA 4.0
- The zoo was opened by the Imperial Russian Acclimatisation Society on 31 January (12 February) 1864; one of the main initiators was Professor Anatoly Bogdanov.
- The first elephant, Mavluk, was presented to the zoo by Alexander II in the second half of the 1860s.
- In winter 1941 only one brown bear, Zoyka, was left on Zverinyi Island; she dug her own den.
- The pedestrian bridge over Bolshaya Gruzinskaya Street, linking the two sites, was built by 1997.
- The zoo's symbol since 1987 has been the Pallas's cat, the manul.
- In 2019 the giant pandas Ru Yi and Ding Ding arrived from China, and in 2023 they had Katyusha, the first giant panda born in Russia.
🚶 on foot
3
🍽 Korchma restaurant by the zoo · 🧸 play area
Садовая-Кудринская ул., 3А
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Korchma is right by the zoo, 150 m from the planetarium — handy for lunch between the two. On Sundays at about 4 p.m. there is a free children's cooking workshop. With a stroller: besides the stairs, there is a lift entrance around the corner of the building, and there is a cloakroom.
🍴 A Belarusian tavern at the edge of the zoo with a big kids' play room, a kids' menu and free cooking workshops for children on Sundays. Try: borscht with pampushki, smetannik cake, homemade kvass; for kids, dishes from the kids' menu.
🚶 on foot
4
🍜 Depo.Moskva
Лесная ул., 20А
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A food mall: everyone picks food to their taste
🍴 A huge food hall in a former tram depot by Belorusskaya: dozens of food stalls and farmers' shops. What to order: crab shawarma at Kraby Kutaby, pasta at Makarony Kosmos, ramen at the ramen counter.