Smolenskaya: from the Metro to the Arbat

Stories along the route

1. Смоленская (станция метро, Арбатско-Покровская линия) · 0.1 km

   You are standing in a station that holds an entire era within it. This is Smolenskaya — one of those pearls that appeared in the Moscow metro in the middle of the last century.

2. Храм Святителя Николая на Щепах · 0.3 km

   You are standing in front of a church that seems to have stepped straight out of an old postcard, and you probably have no idea that its name holds a secret of Moscow's craftsmen.

3. Дом работников НКВД на Смоленской площади · 0.4 km

   You are standing in front of a building that took almost twenty years to construct — from 1939 to 1956. Imagine: they began raising it before the war and finished only after Victory.

4. Памятник Александру Пушкину и Наталье Гончаровой · 0.9 km

   Вы стоите перед бронзовой парой, которая словно только что вышла из-под венца и теперь навсегда идёт рука об руку.

5. Мемориальная квартира Андрея Белого · 1.0 km

   Imagine: a house where a man spent the first twenty-six years of his life — a man whose real name only literary scholars know, while his pseudonym sounds like music — Andrei Bely.

6. Смоленская площадь · 1.5 km

   You are standing in the very heart of old Moscow, where time seems to have slowed its pace. Smolenskaya Square is not just a crossroads, but a living witness of history that remembers when trade bustled here.