Moscow Guide
The Zemlyanoy Gorod
In medieval times, the white-walled Beliy Gorod was encircled by a humbler Zemlyanoy Gorod, or "Earth Town", ringed by an earthen rampart 15km in diameter. Its wooden houses and muddy lanes proved impervious to change until its total destruction in the fire of 1812. Reconstruction presented an ideal opportunity for gentrification, as former artisans' quarters were colonized by the nobility and the old ramparts were levelled to form a ring of boulevards, where anyone building a house was obliged to plant trees – the origin of the Garden Ring (Sadovoe koltso) that marked the division between the bourgeois centre and the proletarian suburbs.
Although Moscow's growth eroded this distinction and the Revolution turned it inside out, the area's cachet endured. Its roll call of famous residents includes Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, Gorky and Bulgakov, all of whom are associated with certain neighbourhoods – in particular, Bulgakov and the Patriarch's Ponds. Besides its literary associations, this is one of the best-looking parts of Moscow, with Empire and Art Nouveau mansions on every corner of the backstreets off the Arbat. This quarter has inspired poet-musicians like Bulat Okudzhava, giving rise to a vibrant street life that was unique in Moscow during the 1980s and is still more tourist-friendly than anything else currently on offer.
The modern Garden Ring is a Stalinist creation whose name has been a misnomer since all the trees were felled when it was widened to an eight-lane motorway in the 1930s (said to have been envisaged as an aircraft runway in wartime). Vast avenues, flanked by leviathan blocks and the Stalin-Gothic skyscrapers whose pinnacles and spires dominate Moscow's skyline, exude power and indifference. In 1944, hordes of German POWs were herded along the Ring en route to Siberia; some Muscovites jeered, others threw them bread. The Ring witnessed barricades and bloodshed during the crises of 1991 and 1993 – but under normal circumstances, traffic is the only real hazard.