The Kitay-gorod

Along the east wall of the Kremlin lies Red Square (Krasnaya Ploshchad), the ceremonial centre of the capital and scene of holiday parades. The modest Lenin Mausoleum blends into the wall, which itself contains the graves of most of the U.S.S.R.'s past leadership. At the southern end of Red Square is the Church of the Intercession (Pokrovsky Sobor), better known as the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed. Built in 1554–60 to commemorate the defeat of the Tatars (Mongols) of Kazan and Astrakhan by Ivan IV the Terrible, it is a unique and magnificent architectural fantasy, each of its 10 domes differing in design and colour. Along Red Square facing the Kremlin is the State Department Store—usually called by its Russian acronym, GUM—with its long aisles, iron bridges linking the upper floors, and great skylights. The slightly earlier State Historical Museum (1875–83) closes off the northern end of the square. In 1990 the Kremlin and Red Square areas were added to UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Many old churches survive in the Kitay-gorod. Of particular note are the Church of the Trinity (1628–34) in Nikitniki, the 15th-century Church of St. Anne of the Conception, and the Epiphany Cathedral (1693–96). The Kitay-gorod was for centuries the commercial centre of Moscow, and its narrow, crowded streets still contain former banks, the stock-exchange building, and warehouses. Many of the old buildings near the river, however, were demolished in the 1960s to make room for the huge Rossiya Hotel. Along the northern front of the hotel is a row of preserved buildings, including the 16th-century house of the Romanov boyars and Old English Embassy and the 17th-century Monastery of the Sign.

The inner city

In the remainder of the central part of Moscow, within the Garden Ring (Sadovoye Koltso), are buildings representative of every period of Moscow's development from the 15th century to the present day. Scattered through the inner city are several fine examples of 17th-century church architecture, notably the Church of All Saints of Kulishki, built in the 1670s and '80s to replace a 14th-century edifice, and the Church of the Nativity of Putniki (1649–52). This was the period of development of the Moscow Baroque style; one of the best examples of this style, the Church of the Intercession at Fili (1693), is outside the city centre. Buildings of the classical period—beginning about the latter half of the 18th century and covering the rebuilding of Moscow after the fire of 1812—abound within the Garden Ring and the Boulevard Ring (Bulvarnoye Koltso), the latter forming a rough horseshoe north of the Moskva around the Kremlin and Kitay-gorod, and Zamoskvoreche, a largely residential district south of the Moskva. Notable examples are the old university and the former assembly of nobles with its Hall of Columns (now the House of Trade Unions), both built by Kazakov in the 1780s; the elegant Pashkov House (1785–86), now part of the Lenin State Library; the Lunin House (1818–23), now the Museum of Oriental Art; the Manezh (Riding School; 1817), which is now used as an exhibition hall; and the magnificent Bolshoi Theatre (1821–24), rebuilt in 1856 after a fire. Toward the end of the 19th century and continuing into the early 20th, buildings in the revivalist Old Russian style were built, including the State Tretyakov Gallery (1906) and—just outside of the Garden Ring—the Yaroslavl railway station (1902–04).

In the Soviet period many of the old buildings of the inner city were replaced by large office and apartment buildings. Side by side with the old appeared new buildings in the modern, functional style of the 1920s, in the ponderous, often over-ornate style of the later Stalin period (1930s to '50s), and in the high-rise concrete and glass predominant since the 1960s. Cheek by jowl with the Pashkov House stands the main building of the Lenin State Library (1927–29). Among more imaginative examples of later architecture is the Taganka Theatre (1983).

In the Soviet period much more open space was created, especially by constructing large squares such as Manezhnaya Square (formerly known as the Square of the 50th Anniversary of October). Many streets have also been widened, in particular Gorky Street (Gorkogo Ulitsa), now one of Moscow's principal radial roads, lined with large shops, hotels, and offices. The Garden Ring itself has been widened to form a broad highway with multiple lanes in each direction and with overpasses where it is intersected by the main radial routes. In the 1960s a new radial street, Prospekt Kalinina, was built through an area of older housing westward from the Kremlin to the Moskva River; it is lined by high-rise office and apartment buildings, linked at street and second-floor levels by a shopping mall. At its outer end rises a lofty, three-winged building overlooking the river that for many years housed offices of Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, disbanded in 1991). Yet, just next to this bustling thoroughfare is Arbat Street (also called Old Arbat), one of the most picturesque streets of Moscow and now closed to vehicular traffic. Most of the historic buildings of central Moscow have been preserved—since the 1960s much careful restoration and repair work has been undertaken—but some architectural monuments disappeared in the early Soviet period. In 1931, Stalin demolished the 19th-century Cathedral of the Savior. Since 1958, a vast open-air swimming pool existed on its foundation, in accordance with Khrushchev's orders. Not until 1997 was the cathedral completely reconstructed.

Inner Moscow has the functions typical of a central business district. In this area are concentrated most of the government offices and administrative headquarters of state bodies, most of the hotels and larger shops, and the principal theatres, museums, and art galleries. But its function as a residential area has not been lost; the many large apartment buildings of modern times have ensured that a large population continues to live in the centre, and there are still many quiet residential neighbourhoods within the Garden Ring.