Moscow Guide
Taganka and Zayauze
Izmaylovo Park
The 750-acre Izmaylovo Park is named after the estate where Peter the Great grew up, and nowadays known for its art market. Take the metro to Izmaylovskiy Park station, whose decor commemorates the Great Patriotic War (notice the PPSh machine-gun motifs on the pillars, and the statues of Partisan heroine Zoya Kosmodemskaya at the top of the stairs). Stepping outside, you'll see the five high-rise blocks of the hotel complex that was built for the 1980 Olympics, and a stream of shoppers heading for the Izmaylovo Market (Izmaylovskiy rynok or Vernissazh; daily 10am–5pm). One of Moscow's top tourist attractions, its stock ranges from matryoshka dolls and officers' caps to prewar cameras, busts of Lenin, woodcarvings, paintings, ceramics, carpets, quilts and even wolfskins for sale. The widest selection is on Saturdays and Sundays, when there may be buskers strumming away on the stage-set medieval wooden palace just inside the entrance to the market.
On the far side of the fenced path to the market, a few-minutes' walk past a sports ground will bring you to an island that was once the heart of the Izmaylovo Royal Estate. Owned by the Romanov boyars since the sixteenth century, it was Tsar Alexei's favourite retreat and Peter's home during the regency of Sofia. In 1688 Peter discovered a small boat of Western design abandoned on the Yauza, and insisted on being taught how to sail by a Dutchman – the birth of his passion for the sea, which led to the creation of the Russian Navy and vistas of maritime power for what had previously been a landlocked nation.