Moscow Guide
Zamoskvareche and the south
The island
Directly across the river from the Kremlin is an oddly nameless island that came into being with the digging of the four-kilometre-long Drainage Canal in the 1780s; hitherto, it had formed part of Zamoskvareche and been the tsar's market garden. Stroll across Bolshoy Kamenniy most (Great Stone Bridge) and along Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya for a glorious view of the Kremlin, with its yellow palaces and thirty golden domes arrayed above the red battlements.
The island's strelka, or point, features a surreal monument to Peter the Great, created by Mayor Luzhkov's court sculptor, Tsereteli, at a reputed cost of $11 million. Reviled as the most tasteless of all the monuments inflicted by these two on Moscow, it consists of a life-size frigate perched on a base like a column of water, festooned with flags and smaller ships, with a giant statue of Peter in a toga bestriding its deck, waving a golden scroll. Erected to mark the three hundredth anniversary of the Russian Navy, the monument is so tall (95m) that its mast is topped by aircraft hazard-warning lights. The woman on the gate will let you through if you ask nicely, but closer proximity is prevented by an armed guard since neo-Bolsheviks threatened to blow up the monument if Lenin's body was removed from the mausoleum on Red Square. You can also get a good view of the monument from the sculpture park behind the new Tretyakov Gallery, or on river-boat cruises.