The Old Arbat Street (Part 1)

The Old Arbat is one of the oldest streets in Moscow and one of the favourite walking places for Muscovites and tourists. Paved, planted with trees, illuminated with old-style street-lamps, this pedestrian street lined with trendy cafes and souvenir shops is a delight for everybody.

Nostalgics will regret the time when the tramway used to pass through the street, when poets and bards were filling the place with their art. The street became pedestrian in 1986, and since then the Old Arbat welcomes rock musicians, street dancers, portraitists and secondhand booksellers.

We will start our tour from the metro station Smolenskaya, and the unmistakable Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one of the seven Stalinist buildings. It is said that this building was the first one to be finished because Stalin could check the progressing work of construction from his car everyday on his way from his dacha to the Kremlin.

But Stalin was not the only one to take this way to enter the Kremlin. In 1812, Napoleon entered the city by the Old Arbat and took a few days rest at the Kremlin before beating a retreat all the way back to the French capital.

A bit further down the street, the statue of Pushkin and his wife Natalya is faсing the lovely turquoise-blue house where the couple lived happily for few months in 1829, just after getting married. Unfortunately, Pushkin was not only one of the greatest poets of all times, but he was also addicted to card games and the couple had to moved back to Saint Petersburg in a hurry after the poet had lost too much money. Later, the house was occupied by Modest Tchaikovsky, brother of the famous composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky. At the end of the of Soviet era, the house went under renovations and became the literary museum Pushkin.

N° 42: in this house lived Ekaterina Ushakova. This name doesn't sound familiar to you? Ekaterina was very fond of Pushkin, and his wedding to Natalya affected her so much, that she agreed getting married only after the poet's death.