Moscow Guide
The Kitay-gorod
Zaryade
The most interesting part of the Kitay-gorod is the area known as Zaryade, situated due east of St Basil's. From the twelfth century onwards, the swampy slope above the Moskva River was settled by craftsmen and artisans, whose homes lay behind the rows (za ryade) of stalls that covered what is now Red Square. Though nobles and foreign merchants displaced them during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the quarter gradually reverted to being the heart of popular Moscow, crammed with booths and huts, and smelling of "perfumed Russian leather, spiritous liquors, sour beer, cabbages, and grease of Cossacks' boots", and undrained cesspits that rendered it prone to epidemics. In War and Peace, Tolstoy wrote of peasants lying unconscious in the mud, and drunken soldiers staggering after prostitutes.
Today, Zaryade's main sights lie along or just off ulitsa Varvarka (St Barbara St), which is the oldest street in Moscow, dating back to the fourteenth century. During Soviet times it was called ulitsa Razina, after the leader of the 1670 peasant revolt, Stenka Razin, who was led along it to his execution on Red Square. Seen from Red Square, Varvarka's vista of onion domes and gilded crosses is marred only by the Rossiya Hotel, a 1960s eyesore covering nearly ten acres, whose architects originally intended to demolish the churches and medieval residences lining the street's south side. The hotel itself recently faced demolition, but seems to have been spared for now, while the appeal of the churches owes less to their interiors than to the totality of their variegated facades, which appear taller on the hotel-facing side, being built against a steep bank.
The first that you reach is the compact salmon-pink-and-white Church of St Barbara (tserkov Varvary; Mon– Sun 11am–6pm, except during services; free), built in 1796–1804, on the site of an earlier church by Alevisio Novi, the architect of the Archangel Cathedral in the Kremlin.