Moscow Guide
The Kitay-gorod
Teatralnaya ploshchad
Teatralnaya ploshchad (Theatre Square) is the next part of downtown Moscow set to be transformed. There's certainly room for improvement, as the square was cut in half by ulitsa Okhotniy ryad in the 1930s, leaving the Bolshoy and other theatres isolated from the greenery that did them justice. In the park on the Kitay-gorod side of the avenue, a statue of Karl Marx looms out of a granite menhir, flanked by testimonials reading: "His name will endure through the ages, and so will his work" (Engels); "Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true" (Lenin).
As a foretaste of what's to come, the end of the square is now dramatized by a replica of the medieval walls of Kitay-gorod, complete with swallow-tailed crenellations and a tent-roofed tower, added to a genuine portion that runs off behind the Metropol Hotel due to a bend in the now-buried Neglina River. While the Proofreading House in the Synodal Printing House and belltower of the Zaikonspasskiy Monastery above the ramparts are accessible by a stairway, you're more likely to be drawn to the hotel. A Style Moderne masterpiece built (1899–1903) by the Odessa-born British architect William Walcott, its north wall features a huge ceramic panel, The Princess of Dreams, designed by the Symbolist artist Mikhail Vrubel in his characteristic palette of indigo, violet and bottle green. Notice the wrought-iron gateway, and the two plaques beside the main entrance, attesting to the hotel's role as the "Second House of Soviets", where the Central Executive of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies met in 1918–19. Famous guests have included Tolstoy, Chaliapin, George Bernard Shaw, JFK and Michael Jackson.