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If you truly want to walk into Moscow’s past, then take  a stroll down Varvarka Street, located at the end of the GUM Department store and runs into Red Square from behind St. Basil’s Cathedral.  As you walk down this street, you can not help but feel as if you’ve stepped by in time as if you had just stepped out of Doctor Who’s Police Box.  Varvarka Street was once the home of the artisans who made and sold their goods in Red Square, Varvarka Street is today considered to be Moscow’s oldest street dating back to the 1300’s. You will find more churches here on Varvarka than any other street in Moscow that beautifully shows something of a  more personal side of life in medieval Moscow.  I think this old street shows more than any other how Moscow is a changing city, sadly not all changes are always good.  Take the photos in this article, they were all taken only two years ago when the Rossiya Hotel, the largest hotel in Europe was still standing, well, this hotel is gone now and no telling what new Frankenstein monster will replace it.  The Rossiya Hotel now belongs to history.

During the 1400s this area was transformed into an area for the privileged nobility to live because of its close location to the Kremlin. Here boyars hoping to be noticed by the tsars, built their estates and foreign embassies took up residence, including the.Romanov family who built an estate here before becoming the rulers of Russia for 300 years.

During the Bolshevik rule, Varvarka’s  name was changed to Razin, after the Cossack rebel who was led down this street to his execution in 1671. Before that in 1380, Varvarka Street was the street in which the victorious Dmitry Donskoy marched his troops down and entered into Moscow after defeating the Mongols in the Battle of Kulikovo.

At one time, the largest hotel in the world, the Rossiya Hotel, loomed over Varvarka Street, but this hotel has recently been torn down so another record setting hotel and shopping mall can be built.  Sadly, the building of the Rossiya Hotel resulted in the destruction of many of Varvarka’s  historic structures. Varvarka Street still survives and as you walk down this short street, you can not help but feel as if you have actually stepped back in time, if the city of Moscow were to ban cars on this street and make it into a pedestrian walk, the mood would be complete. 
 
Varvarka Street runs from the “Kitai Gorod” Metro station on to the St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. It only takes a short time to walk Varvarka Street depending on how often you choose to stop and go inside the old building or taking photos. Currently the  Rossiya Hotel that was between Varvarka Street and the Moskva River is being torn down and a new large mall and hotel being built, so you can find certain areas of the street closed off and you’ll have to detour to a side street until construction of this new Frankenstein monster is finished.

Though short in length, Varvarka Street has more old churches on it than any other street in Moscow and also has several lesser known interesting sights that beautifully make you feel as if you’ve stepped back in time. Varvarka Street is named after the Church of St. Barabara, which stands to the right at the beginning of the street after you leave Red Square where St. Basil’s Cathedral is located. St. Barbara, who was killed by her father because of her Christian beliefs, is  considered to be the patron saint of  Moscow’s merchants, and it was originally merchants who lived here in the area and built this church.  The present church was built in  1796.





Next to the church is the English Court, also known as the Old English Embassy, considered to be Moscow’s oldest secular building. Originally it was a small palace built for the wealthy merchant Bobrishchev in the 1500s , Soon after the palace was taken by Ivan the Terrible and presented to the Muscovy Company, who were a delegation of English merchants who arrived in Murmansk in 1553 under the command of Richard Chanellor, aiming to get a share of the lucrative Russian fur trade. The third English envoy to Ivan's court found himself under house arrest when the Tsar's efforts to win Elizabeth I's hand in marriage were repeatedly rejected. Less than a century later, when Charles I was defeated by Oliver Cromwell's troops and executed, Tsar Aleksei kicked out the English traders in disgust at the king’s execution. Restored to its original design during the building of the Rossiya Hotel in the sixties, the English Court was opened as a museum when Queen Elizabeth II's state visit to Russia in 1994.



Next to the English Court, you will find the Church of St. Maksim which was built in the 1600s, with merchants' funds, and takes its name from a celebrated holy fool who was buried in the original wooden church located on the same site. The church's bell tower is famous in Moscow for being visibly off-center, and is locally known as the city's 'leaning tower'.  The bell-tower with a green cupola built in 1829 in front of the Church of Maximus the Blessed is a example of late Classi­cal Russian architecture.


 

The next section of the street, is strongly linked with the Romanovs, Russia's rulers for three hundred years. Before Mikhail I was elected Tsar by the Boyars' Assembly in 1613, the family were important Moscow aristocrats, and this area of Varvarka was their home. After the family moved into the Kremlin, the area was presented to the Znamensky Monastery. The first building you come to is the monastery's red-and-white bell tower, added in the 1700s, which was separated from the rest of the monastery by the Rossiya Hotel’s elevated ramp. The monastery’s living quarters, which stand by the monastery's main entrance, built in the 1670s, are now used as a shop for selling Orthodox icons and related souvenirs. The center of the complex is the Palace of the Romanov Boyars, built in the 1500s by Mikhail's grandfather, Nikita Romanov Zakharyin-Yuryev, the first Romanov tsar was born in this house. It now houses a museum showing the lifestyle of Moscow's medieval nobility.



The monastery's name, means the Monastery of the Sign and refers to a famous icon, The Sign of the Sacred Virgin, painted in Novgorod in the early 1500s, this icon had become a sort of spiritual heirloom for the Romanov family. The monastery was also the home of the first printed bible in Moscow. The Cathedral of the Sign, a large brown-brick church topped with four green domes around a central circular one, was built in 1684, although it bears a strong resemblance to the earlier cathedrals in the Kremlin. This church and the Romanov estate house are all that remains of the monastery that once stood here on the former Romanov estate before being destroyed to build that huge Frankenstein hotel.

 
The Church of St. George, which was built in 1657 was also built from the contributions of wealthy merchants. This lovely church with its tall towers and starry cupolas were typical at this time. The additional green bell tower was built in 1818. The church now houses another shop selling icons and other Orthodox souvenirs. If you look carefully at the bell tower, you may notice that it leans and is often referred to as Moscow’s Leaning Tower.  So if you take photos of this church and post process your photos, be careful that you do not remove the lean in the tower, it actually does lean.
  


When you reach the intersection of Varvarka and Stavyanskaya, if you go right you will be heading towards the Moscow River, when you get to the river, turn right and this will carry you back to the Kremlin and Red Square.  One of the sites you will pass is the old Kitai-Gorod wall.  The walls were erected in 1536-39 by an Italian architect known as Petrok Maly.  The wall originally had 13 towers and six gates. The walls were as wide as they were high, the average being six meters in both dimensions thus making them some of the strongest walls in Europe. The last of the towers were torn down in the 1930s, but small portions of the wall remain today. One of two remaining parts of the wall is located in Zaryadye at the end of Varvarka Street and the other near the exit from the Okhotny Ryad metro station behind the Hotel Metropol.


Recently the Moscow mayor announced plans for a full-scale restoration of the wall. City officials also plan to close Kitai-gorod to automobile traffic. Since 1995, the wall has been extensively rebuilt, and a new tower has been added. Inside the tower are a couple of restaurants and bars.  When you get to the Moscow River, be on the lookout for a small white church built in the 1500s named Conception at the corner of Anna.  With the tearing down of the old Rossiya Hotel and construction of  a new large hotel and shopping center this area is pretty busy and sometimes closed off, so instead you may wish to turn left down Novaya and go to Nikol’skaya, turn left and go back to Red Square.  There are many old, historic and lovely buildings in the Kitai-gorod area of Moscow.