Kitay-Gorod: Walls, Varvarka Street and What to See

Kitay-Gorod Moscow is the old merchants’ quarter that lies east of the Kremlin, separated from it by Red Square. Despite the name, it has no connection to China, and it is best known for the sections of its 16th-century wall and for three old streets: Varvarka, Ilyinka and Nikolskaya.

The quarter is dense and mostly non-residential, with offices, shops, small museums and monasteries, and much of it can be covered on foot in a few hours. Many buildings were lost in the 1920s and 1930s, so the visit is a search for what survived, from a wall fragment in a metro underpass to the boyar chambers on Varvarka.

Quick Facts

Russian name	Китай-город
Address	Between Red Square, Theatre Square, Lubyanka Square and the Moskva River, central Moscow OpenStreetMap · Google Maps
District	Tverskoy
Metro	Kitay-Gorod (Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line (Line 6, orange) and Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line (Line 7, purple), A walking route of the Moscow tourism pages starts at this station and leads to Varvarka Street; the exits and the walking time were not verified) Okhotny Ryad (Sokolnicheskaya Line (Line 1, red), Listed by the State Historical Museum among the nearest stations for Varvarka Street, together with Teatralnaya and Ploshchad Revolyutsii; the walking time and the exit were not verified)
Opening hours	The streets and lanes of Kitay-Gorod are public and can be walked at any time; museums, churches and shops keep their own hours. The Chambers of the Romanov Boyars, for example, post different hours by weekday and season on the State Historical Museum's page, with ticket offices closing an hour before the museum. (as of October 2026 – check the official site)
Admission	Walking the streets is free. The Chambers of the Romanov Boyars charge ₽₽ for adults and ₽ for children aged 7 to 17, according to the State Historical Museum's page (en.shm.ru/museum/pbr); other museums and churches set their own rules.
Best time to visit	The quarter can be visited all year, and it is best in daylight on a weekday, when the museums are open. Evenings are livelier on Nikolskaya Street. Crowd patterns and seasonal hours were not verified; check each museum's own page.
Recommended duration	3 to 4 hours
Last updated	October 7, 2026

What Is (and Isn't) Part of a Visit to Kitay-Gorod?

Part	Status	Notes
Varvarka, Ilyinka and Nikolskaya streets	Included in the standard ticket	Public streets that can be walked free at any time; Nikolskaya is a pedestrian street.
Wall fragments in the Kitay-Gorod metro underpass	Included in the standard ticket	Part of the Varvarka Gate and a tower base can be seen in the station passage.
Chambers of the Romanov Boyars (Varvarka 10)	Separate ticket or institution	A branch of the State Historical Museum with its own ticket and hours.
Old English Court (Varvarka 4a)	Separate ticket or institution	A small museum with its own ticket and hours, next to the boyar chambers.
Zaryadye Park	Separate ticket or institution	Lies within the old quarter and has its own rules and guide on this site.
Red Square and St. Basil's Cathedral	Outside / not part of it	Neighboring sights on the western edge of the quarter, covered by their own guides.
The Moscow Kremlin	Outside / not part of it	Separated from Kitay-Gorod by Red Square and visited with its own tickets.
GUM department store	Outside / not part of it	Stands on Red Square at the western edge of the quarter and is a shopping destination rather than a sight of the walk.

Why Visit Kitay-Gorod?

Kitay-Gorod is where you can see how Moscow’s trading quarter grew beside the Kremlin. Within a short walk are the surviving pieces of the 16th-century wall, the chambers of the Romanov boyars, the Old English Court, the Zaikonospassky Monastery on Nikolskaya Street and the 19th-century exchange building.

The streets are narrow and the buildings are of many periods, so a walk shows layers of the city that the Kremlin and Red Square do not. The area has no entrance fee, and small museums and cafes make it easy to shorten or extend the route. Note that Red Square, St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin are separate sights next to the quarter.

How Kitay-Gorod Is Laid Out

Kitay-Gorod is a wedge-shaped area east of the Kremlin. Red Square forms its western edge, with GUM facing the square, and the quarter is bordered by Theatre Square near the Bolshoi, Lubyanka Square and Slavyanskaya Square, with the Moskva River to the south. Three old streets run roughly side by side, from the Red Square end toward the east.

Varvarka Street is the southern one, running along the former Zaryadye district toward the river; its row of old churches and the boyar chambers make it the most visited. Ilyinka Street is the middle one and leads to the former exchange building on Birzhevaya Square. Nikolskaya Street, a pedestrian street, is the northern one, with the Zaikonospassky Monastery, the Print Yard and the Old Mint.

A sensible route starts at the Kitay-Gorod metro station, where a fragment of the old Varvarka gate shows in the underpass, then follows Varvarka, turns toward Ilyinka and Birzhevaya Square, and returns along Nikolskaya Street to Red Square. Zaryadye Park, which lies within the quarter, can be added at the start or the end.

Highlights of Kitay-Gorod

The surviving wall and the Varvarka Gate

The quarter's wall was built from 1535 under the Italian architect Petrok Maly and torn down in the 1930s, apart from a few sections. A portion of the Varvarka Gate and the base of a tower can still be seen in the wall of the underpass at the Kitay-Gorod metro station, and other fragments stand in Zaryadye. Look for the old brickwork inside the station passage.

Tip: Start at the Kitay-Gorod station and look for the wall fragments in the underpass before you go up.

Varvarka Street and the Romanov Boyars' Chambers

Varvarka is the street of old churches and merchant houses near Red Square. At number 10 stand the Chambers of the Romanov Boyars, a branch of the State Historical Museum in the family home of the Romanovs, opened as a museum in 1859. The exhibition shows 17th-century interiors. It needs its own ticket and is not part of any walking route fee.

Tip: Check the museum's page for hours and ticket sessions, since the chambers admit visitors in limited numbers.

The Old English Court

The Old English Court at Varvarka 4a is one of the oldest buildings in the quarter, dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, according to museum guides, and is linked with the English merchants who traded with Russia from the 16th century. It is a separate small museum next to the chambers. Check its own site for hours and tickets before you go.

Tip: Plan the Old English Court and the Romanov Chambers together, since they stand side by side.

Ilyinka Street and the exchange building

Ilyinka Street, named after a former Elijah monastery, was a street of banks and trading houses in the 19th century and leads to Birzhevaya Square. The former exchange building there now houses the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The Church of Elijah the Prophet stands in the street. A route from the Kitay-Gorod station reaches it via a lane off Varvarka.

Tip: Walk Ilyinka toward Birzhevaya Square to see the former exchange building from the front.

Nikolskaya Street and the Zaikonospassky Monastery

Nikolskaya is a pedestrian street that takes its name from the Greek Monastery of St. Nicholas. The Zaikonospassky Monastery, founded in 1600 under Boris Godunov, housed the Slavic Greek Latin Academy from 1687 to 1814, where Mikhail Lomonosov studied. The Moscow Print Yard, the first printing house in Russia, stands in the street. The monastery reopened in 1992.

Tip: Walk Nikolskaya toward Red Square rather than away from it, to finish at the square.

The merchants' churches of the side lanes

Some of the oldest buildings are in the lanes rather than on the main streets: the cathedral of the Epiphany Monastery in Bogoyavlensky Lane dates from the 1690s, and the Trinity Church in Nikitniki was built in the 1630s on the land of the merchant Grigory Nikitnikov. Many other churches were demolished in the 1920s and 1930s, so the survivors are few. Check each church's opening hours.

Tip: Look at a map before you set out, since the churches in the lanes are easy to miss.

Atmosphere

Kitay-Gorod is dense and mostly non-residential, with narrow streets, buildings of many periods and the office towers and shop fronts of a business quarter. Nikolskaya is a pedestrian street, while Varvarka and Ilyinka have traffic and a lot of parked cars.

By day the quarter is full of office workers and visitors on their way between Red Square and the cafes. In the evening it is quieter in the lanes and livelier near Nikolskaya. Old churches and monastery walls stand among modern fronts, and the view often shows a church dome beside an office building. The crowd varies by season, and no figures were verified.

History of Kitay-Gorod

Settlement here began in the 11th century, and by the 14th century the area outside the Kremlin had become a trading quarter known as the Great Posad. The name Kitay-Gorod dates from the 16th century. In the 15th century nobles began to settle in the quarter, and rich merchants took over later.

In 1535 the regent Elena Glinskaya commissioned the Italian architect Petrok Maly to build a stone wall around the quarter. It was finished by about 1538 and was around 2.6 km long, about 6 meters thick and between 8 and 12 meters high, with a moat in front. Sources give between 12 and 14 towers. The wall closed the quarter from the Kremlin’s corner towers around to the river and made it a town within a town.

Fires in 1610 and 1812 damaged the quarter, but it remained the commercial center of the city. In the early 18th century, when Moscow prepared for an invasion by Charles XII, Peter the Great ordered ramparts and a deeper moat around the wall. Monasteries stood along Nikolskaya Street, including the Zaikonospassky Monastery, founded in 1600, where the Slavic Greek Latin Academy opened in 1687, and the Print Yard, the first printing house in Russia.

In the 19th century the quarter became the most prestigious business district of Moscow, with banks, trading houses and shops along Ilyinka, Nikolskaya and Varvarka. The State Department Store, GUM, was built at the Red Square edge between 1889 and 1893. In the 1890s developers consolidated large plots on the edge of the quarter.

The Soviet period brought heavy losses. In the 1920s and 1930s all 10 chapels, 7 of the 18 parish churches, the cathedral of the Greek monastery and two monastery bell towers were demolished. The wall was pulled down in the 1930s, and the Varvarka Gate was dismantled; a portion of it can be seen in the underpass of the Kitay-Gorod metro station. The Church of St. Nicholas on Ilyinka, built between 1680 and 1689, was destroyed in 1933, and the Kazan Cathedral on the corner of Nikolskaya and Red Square in 1936. In 1935 Nikolskaya Street was renamed Street of the 25th of October, and its old name was restored in 1990.

Since 1995 parts of the wall have been rebuilt and a new tower has been added, and archaeologists have found a hidden chamber at the base of the wall near the Ilyinsky Garden. Zaryadye, the historic district between Varvarka and the river, lies within the quarter and has its own park.

Legends and Myths about Kitay-Gorod

Kitay-Gorod is a Chinatown

Legend – historically unreliable. Because kitay is the modern Russian word for China, many visitors take the name to mean a Chinese quarter. Scholars agree that the name has nothing to do with China, and there was never a significant Chinese presence here. The name's origin is a matter of competing theories.

The name comes from bundles of poles

Disputed by historians. One widely repeated explanation derives kitay from the old word kita, a bundle of poles or twigs used to reinforce the earlier wall of the quarter. The theory is plausible but not proved.

The name comes from an Italian or Turkic word

Disputed by historians. Other theories link the name to the Italian cittadella, meaning citadel, since the wall was built by an Italian architect, or to a Turkic word meaning fortress or center. Both are cited in popular guides, but historians have not agreed on any single origin for the name.

Tickets and Booking for Kitay-Gorod

Ticket	Price	Includes
Chambers of the Romanov Boyars – adult	₽₽	Entry to the museum's exhibition of 17th-century boyar interiors; the audio guide costs extra.
Chambers of the Romanov Boyars – child aged 7 to 17	₽	Entry to the same exhibition; younger children and some categories enter free according to the museum's page.

There is no ticket for the quarter itself. The only price checked here is for the Chambers of the Romanov Boyars on Varvarka Street, a branch of the State Historical Museum, which sells tickets through the museum’s own site. Admission is by session and the number of tickets is limited, according to a museum guide, so book ahead in busy months, and the ticket offices close an hour before the museum.

• Other museums: the Old English Court and the churches set their own hours and rules; check each one’s site or noticeboard.
• Payment: foreign Visa and Mastercard cards are reported not to work in Russia, and the sanctions rules of your own country may restrict some Russian payment services, so check this yourself.

Rates for Russian citizens and concessions differ; the official page for all categories is en.shm.ru/museum/pbr.

Suggested Itineraries for Kitay-Gorod

2 hours

Start at the Kitay-Gorod metro station and look at the wall fragments in the underpass. Walk Varvarka Street past the old churches and the boyar chambers, then turn toward Ilyinka and Birzhevaya Square. Return along Nikolskaya Street to Red Square.

3 hours

Follow the 2-hour route and add a visit to the Chambers of the Romanov Boyars or the Old English Court, with a stop at the Zaikonospassky Monastery on Nikolskaya Street. Finish with a coffee break in one of the cafes of the pedestrian street.

Half day

Add Zaryadye Park and the wall sections within it to the 3-hour route, then walk the side lanes to the Epiphany Monastery cathedral and the Trinity Church in Nikitniki. Check each church's opening hours before you plan the lanes.

How to Get to Kitay-Gorod

The quarter is served by the Kitay-Gorod metro station, on Lines 6 and 7, which a tourism route names as the start of a walk to Varvarka Street. The State Historical Museum also lists Okhotny Ryad, Teatralnaya and Ploshchad Revolyutsii as nearest stations for Varvarka; the exits and walking times were not verified.

• Metro: Kitay-Gorod for Varvarka and Ilyinka; Okhotny Ryad or Ploshchad Revolyutsii for Red Square and Nikolskaya Street; Lubyanka for the northern edge.
• Taxi: the taxi apps guide of this site explains the options; much of the quarter has limited traffic.

Accessibility

No accessibility information for the quarter as a whole was found. Nikolskaya is a pedestrian street, but the surface and the steps at individual buildings and the metro stations were not verified. Ask the museums about access before you go.

Food Nearby

Cafes and restaurants line Nikolskaya, Ilyinka and the lanes around the quarter. No individual venue was verified for this guide, so check opening hours and menus on site.

What to Bring

Comfortable shoes* for cobbles and long walks, and layers for the season. Bring rubles in cash for small purchases, since foreign cards are reported not to work.

Best Views and Photo Spots of Kitay-Gorod

Varvarka Street

The street of old churches and merchant houses near Red Square, with domes rising behind the facades. The row of historic buildings shows several periods in a single frame.

Best time: Early morning, when there are fewer people.

Wall fragments in Zaryadye

Surviving sections of the 16th-century wall stand in the park, and the brickwork shows the thickness of the old fortification. The park setting gives a clear view of the wall.

Best time: Daylight, in dry weather.

Birzhevaya Square

The former exchange building, now the Chamber of Commerce, closes the end of Ilyinka Street. The facade is best seen from the middle of the square.

Best time: Late afternoon light.

Nikolskaya Street

A pedestrian street with the Zaikonospassky Monastery and the Print Yard along it and Red Square at one end. The straight view of the street gives a sense of the old quarter.

Best time: Evening, when the street is lit.

Photography Rules

No general photography rules for the streets were found. Museums and churches set their own rules, so look for signs and ask the staff before you photograph interiors, and avoid flash.

Family Suitability

The quarter is a walk with short stops, and Zaryadye Park next door gives children space to run. The museums are small and may suit older children better. Stroller access on the old streets and at the museums was not verified, so check before you go.

Moscow Vibes Tips

• Start at the Kitay-Gorod metro station, where a fragment of the old Varvarka Gate shows in the underpass.
• Walk Varvarka and Ilyinka first and Nikolskaya last, so that you end at Red Square.
• Do not confuse Kitay-Gorod with a Chinatown; the name has nothing to do with China.
• Check a map before you go into the lanes, since churches such as the Epiphany Monastery cathedral are easy to miss.
• Look up at the upper floors of the old merchant buildings, since the shop fronts below are modern.
• Combine the quarter with Zaryadye Park, which lies inside it and has its own guide on this site.

Explore Nearby Kitay-Gorod

Sights near Kitay-Gorod

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  Red Square Moscow – about 650 m away (~10 min walk) · typical visit: 1–2 hours for the square, 3–5 hours with St Basil's and one museum
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  Zaryadye Park Moscowabout 500 m away (~8 min walk) · typical visit: 1–2 hours; 3 hours with the pavilions
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  GUM Moscowabout 550 m away (~9 min walk) · typical visit: 1–2 hours
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  Zaryadye Concert Hall Moscowabout 500 m away (~8 min walk) · typical visit: About 2.5 to 3 hours for a concert
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  St. Basil’s Cathedral Moscowabout 600 m away (~9 min walk) · typical visit: 45–90 minutes inside
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  Central Children's Store on Lubyanka Moscowabout 650 m away (~11 min walk) · typical visit: About 1 to 2 hours

Metro stations near Kitay-Gorod

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  Kitay-Gorod Metro Stationabout 150 m away (~3 min walk)
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  Lubyanka Metro Stationabout 500 m away (~8 min walk)
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  Ploshchad Revolyutsii Metro Stationabout 550 m away (~9 min walk)

Restaurants and cafes near Kitay-Gorod

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  Masa Madreabout 450 m away (~8 min walk)
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  Megobariabout 450 m away (~8 min walk)
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  Stolovaya 57about 600 m away (~9 min walk)
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  Varenichnaya No. 1about 600 m away (~9 min walk)

Nightlife near Kitay-Gorod

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  Alexey Kozlov Clubabout 350 m away (~6 min walk)
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  Papa's Barabout 450 m away (~8 min walk)

Hotels near Kitay-Gorod

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  Hotel Metropol Moscowabout 650 m away (~11 min walk)
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  The St. Regis Moscow Nikolskayaabout 450 m away (~8 min walk)
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  Hotel Savoy Moscowabout 750 m away (~12 min walk)

Train stations and river piers near Kitay-Gorod

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  Kursky Railway Terminalabout 1.9 km away (~31 min walk)

Events and traditions near Kitay-Gorod

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  Day of Slavic Writing and Culture in Moscowabout 150 m away (~2 min walk)
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  Non/fiction Book Fair in Moscowabout 350 m away (~6 min walk)
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  Spasskaya Tower Military Music Festivalabout 650 m away (~10 min walk)

Related guides

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  Turgenevskaya Metro Station: Three-Line Hub on the Boulevard Ring
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  Teatralnaya Metro Station: Porcelain Medallions and Transfers
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  Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812 Moscow: Tickets, Hours and Tips
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  Vernadsky State Geological Museum Moscow: Minerals, Fossils and Hours
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  Moscow Museum of Archaeology: Underground Bridge, Hours, Tips

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FAQ: Kitay-Gorod

What is Kitay-Gorod?

The old merchants' quarter east of the Kremlin, enclosed by a 16th-century wall, between Red Square and the Moskva River.

Is Kitay-Gorod a Chinatown?

No. The name has nothing to do with China; see the legends section for the competing theories.

Is Red Square part of Kitay-Gorod?

No. Red Square separates the quarter from the Kremlin and borders it; it has its own guide.

Is there an entrance fee?

No for the streets. Museums such as the Chambers of the Romanov Boyars charge their own admission.

Does the wall still exist?

Only in parts. Sections stand in Zaryadye and a portion of the Varvarka Gate shows in the Kitay-Gorod metro underpass.

Which streets should I walk?

Varvarka, Ilyinka and Nikolskaya, the three old main streets of the quarter.

How long does a visit take?

About 3 to 4 hours on foot, longer with museum visits.

Which metro station is best?

Kitay-Gorod for Varvarka and Ilyinka; Okhotny Ryad for Nikolskaya Street.

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