Moscow Guide
The Zemlyanoy Gorod
The Church of the Great Ascension
Address: Across the road from Gorky's house
The bronze-domed Church of the Great Ascension (tserkov Bolshovo Vozneseniya) is where Pushkin, aged 32, married 17-year-old Natalya Goncharova on February 18, 1831. During the ceremony one of the wedding rings was dropped and the candle that he was holding blew out, causing the superstitious writer to mutter in French, "All the omens are bad" – as indeed they were, for he was killed in a duel over his wife's honour six years later. During Soviet times, the church was turned into a sports club used for table-tennis tournaments. A Rotunda fountain with a gilded cupola surmounting bronze statues of the newlyweds (who don't look happy) was erected outside the church on the bicentenary of Pushkin's birth. From here, you can orientate yourself vis-à-vis Nikitskie vorota and cross over to the south side, where any lane will take you into an embassy quarter full of Style Moderne and neo-Gothic mansions, whence you should emerge somewhere along Povarskaya ulitsa.