Yelena led us around the seemingly-endless red-brick walls of the Kremlin. Looming before us was an almost-finished hotel; it's architecture was certainly unusual. It was actually a replica of one built in the 30s, and recently demolished. The front of this hotel, The
Moskva, appeared to be the merger of two different buildings. That's because that;s exactly what the original hotel had been...
The story goes that Comrade Stalin ordered a hotel to be built on Manezh Square to house foreign Ciommunist cadre. The architect brought him a folder, with the plans for two different hotel styles; Stalin signed the folder cover with his approval and the folder was returned to the architect. Since no one had enough courage to go back and ask Stalin which one he approved of, the hotel was built with a side in each of the styles. Only in Russia... We were heading southeast now toward the oldest part of Moscow:The
Zaryadye; this is an area along Varvarka Street bounded by Moskvoretskya and Kitaygorodsky and the River that goes back to the 14th Century. Until recently it was dominated by the world's largest ( of course) hotel, The
Rossiya -- an enormous square monolith built in the early 1960s to house all the foreigners in Moscow at one time, some 2600 rooms.
Seeing what little is left now, one recalls the poem
Ozymandias... Now numerous older and smaller landmarks are easy to pick out in this area:
This is the Church of St Barbara, the namesake of Varvarka Street.
This is the Church of St Maxim. Behind it is a small grassy lot; under an ancient spreading tree is the mound ofearth of a fresh grave, topped by a large wooden 3-bared cross -- no doubt the last resting place of a faithfulparish priest.
Just past the grassy lot is the Old English Court; this is the oldest embassy in the city, serving originally as the office and residence of Richard Chambers, trade minister to Russia under England's Queen Elizabeth I in 1556.
Nearby is the Monastery of the Sign, one of the oldest existent buildings in the city, dating to the mid-1400s.And then our destination --
This is the Boyars Museum, originally the home of a wealthy 15th Century lord, whose descendants would become the Romanovs, the last tsars of Russia.
There are plans to develop the site of the former Rossiya Hotel into a district of 15th century styled shops and residences, so this area will again be completely medieval in appearance.
