Udelnaya: the flea market, a hospital church and a park with pillboxes

⏱ 3 h 30 min🚶 3.5 km🍽 1📍 6 stops

🚶 Moderate — 3–7 km

A weekend, Udelnaya style: a morning vintage hunt at the Udelka, then an old church and a stroll through the wooded Udelny Park with its squirrels and pillboxes.

👶 With kids🏛 History and architecture🏘 Off the centre

👶 3–6, 7–12 years · ✗ hard with a stroller

The flea market is crowded and the ground is dirt. A steep slope leads up to the pillboxes on the upper terrace of Udelny Park, and the paths there are unpaved. Udelnaya metro has no lift.

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps

1
✨ Udelka Flea Market
Фермское шоссе, 41, у ж/д станции Удельная
The city's best-known flea market: Soviet porcelain, badges, records, tools and vintage straight off folding cots.
3 minutes from Udelnaya metro. Walk the rows to the end — the most interesting things are at the far folding tables.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© A.Morgunovskaya · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Варвара Каминская · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Spontaneous trading went on here as early as the 1920s — photographs from those years survive.
- In Soviet times a small park stood where the market is.
- In 2009 the Udelny shopping complex was completed here, and the spontaneous market was pushed back to Poklonnogorskaya Street.
- The market covers more than 12,000 m² and consists of 15 buildings, a second-hand section and the flea market proper.
- In 2016 The Guardian included the flea market by Udelnaya in its list of places foreigners should visit.
🚶 on foot
2
🏛 "Organ Grinder with a Dog" Sculpture
Фермское шоссе, 41, корп. 1
A bronze organ grinder at the entrance to Udelka — the local symbol of the flea market.
A photo with the barrel-organ player is a local tradition.
🚶 on foot
3
🏛 Church of St Panteleimon the Healer in Udelnaya
Фермское шоссе, 38 (территория больницы им. Скворцова-Степанова)
The church of the former Alexander III Asylum for the Mentally Ill — a rare hospital church of old Udelnaya.
Along Fermskoye Shosse to the north; the church is on the hospital grounds.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Monoklon · CC BY 4.0
- The wooden church was built in the 1870s to a design by Academician I. V. Shtrom, funded by the patron Ilya Gromov.
- The church's main icon was an icon of St Panteleimon brought from the Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos.
- Tsesarevich Alexander, the future Alexander III, gave 60–70 thousand rubles toward building the Asylum.
- The church was closed in 1929 and turned into a warehouse; by 1990 it stood roofless with charred walls.
- The bell tower and tent roof were restored in 1995–1996, and the cross was raised in June 1996.
- In 2007 the monument to Alexander III, lost in Soviet times, was returned to its place opposite the entrance.
🚶 on foot
4
🌳 Udelny Park
вход с Фермского шоссе (у д. 21)
A former forest dacha of the Udelninskoye school (1832): century-old larches and oaks, a steep terrace ledge, a pond and a "squirrel enclosure".
Return along Fermskoye Shosse and enter the park by No. 21.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Vladimir Ivanov · CC BY-SA 3.0
© Spb.Terminator · CC BY-SA 4.0
© GAlexandrova · CC BY-SA 4.0
- From 1934 to 1991 the park was called Chelyuskintsev Park.
- Legend has it that a pine planted by Peter the Great himself grew near Akkuratova Street until the end of the 20th century; only a stump remains.
- The 5–6-metre ledge between the park's terraces is the shore of an ancient sea.
- In the early 20th century the pond had a bathing house and a boat pier, and a small waterfall tumbled below the dam.
- From 1968 the USSR's first running enthusiasts' club met at the Spartak stadium in the park.
- In the 1950s–60s the park was the only place in the city where fans of chastushki (folk ditties) met regularly.
- In 2013 the park was designated a cultural heritage site of regional significance.
🚶 on foot
5
🏛 LenUR pillboxes in Udelny Park
Удельный парк, верхняя терраса
Three reinforced-concrete firing points of Leningrad's rear defence line from 1941, right among the pines.
Along the upper terrace to the pillboxes; on the way — the “squirrel house” and a pond.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
🚶 on foot
6
🍽 Peperoni restaurant on Fermskoye Highway · 🧸 play area
Фермское ш., 22
▮▮▯▯▯
Peperoni at Fermskoye, 22 — on the way from the flea market to Udelny Park: a kids’ room with cartoons, and on Sundays a cooking workshop for children (by appointment, about 500 ₽).
🍴 A family Italian trattoria by Udelny Park: a kids' room with toys and cartoons, and a paid children's cooking workshop on Sundays (by reservation). What to order: wood-fired pizza, pasta, and dishes from the kids' menu for the children.