Moscow Guide
Zamoskvareche and the south
Ulitsa Bolshaya Ordynka
Ulitsa Bolshaya Ordynka gets its name from the Mongol-Tatar Golden Horde (Zolotaya Orda), the name of their kingdom on the lower Volga. The Horde's ambassadors to the Kremlin lived near the road that led to their homeland, which came to be called Ordynka. This lies off to the left as you surface from Tretyakovskaya metro, where orientation is facilitated by the gilt-topped Church of the Consolation of All Sorrows, to the north.
Consider heading south first to the all-white Church of St Nicholas by Pyzhov (Sv. Nikolay shto v Pyzhakh), a seventeenth-century building that exemplifies the traditional Russian abhorrence of blank spaces, seething with ogees, blind arcades, fretted cornices, and a massive pendant drooping from its tent-roofed porch.
By crossing the road and walking 150m further south, you'll find a low archway at no. 36, leading to the secluded Convent of SS Martha and Mary (Marfo-Mariinskaya Obitel), whose helmet-domed Church of the Protection – carved with Slavonic runes and mythical creatures – was an early work by Alexei Shchusev, who later built the Lenin Mausoleum and much else for the Soviets.To gain entry requires permission from an office down the street, but you can get a limited view through a crack in the gateway.
Alternatively, head north along Ordynka towards the Moskva River, where a yellow belltower heralds the Church of the Consolation of All Sorrows (tserkov Vsekh Skoryashchikh Radosti).
Slightly further north, a lane on the left called 1-y Kadashevskiy pereulok provides a fine view of the awesome, derelict, viridian-domed Church of the Resurrection on Kadashevskiy (tserkov Voskresenie v Kadashakh). Built in 1687, in the Naryshkin Baroque style, it is rich in limestone ornamentation, with a fancy parapet instead of the usual pyramid of kokoshniki, while the belltower, added in 1695, rises from a ponderous base through delicate tiers emblazoned with flame-shaped mouldings.