The middle zone

Beyond the Garden Ring and approximately as far as the Moscow Little Ring Railway lies a zone mostly of late 18th- and 19th-century development. Within it are many factories and the principal railway stations and freight yards. The Likhachyov Automobile Works, with its associated housing, occupies much of the southeastern sector. Enveloped within this zone are further examples of the best of classical Moscow, such as the 18th-century palace that houses the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of Russia on Leninsky Prospekt. Also to the southwest, on the banks of the Moskva, are the most important of the fortified monasteries, the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, with its beautiful Smolensk Cathedral, whose tall bell tower (1690) dominates the churches and buildings within the crenellated walls and towers of the convent. The cathedral now houses the Novodevichy Convent Museum, and the complex includes a cemetery where, among other prominent figures of Soviet history, Nikita Khrushchev is buried. Just south of Novodevichy, within the large loop of the Moskva and facing the Lenin Hills, is the sports complex known as Luzhniki Park, dominated by the huge Central Lenin Stadium (1955–56).

The middle zone underwent the most urban renewal in Soviet times. Among the features of the present Moscow skyline are the ornate “wedding cake” skyscrapers along the Garden Ring, built in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the same Stalin-period style are the Ukraina Hotel across the river and the gigantic building in the Moscow State University complex on the Lenin Hills. Most of the renewal that has taken place since 1960 consists of extensive neighbourhoods of wide streets lined with rows of apartment buildings. A number of areas still have narrow streets of 19th-century housing and smaller factories.

Outer Moscow

Beyond the Garden Ring is the zone of modern factory development and of extensive housing construction. Closer to the centre are the micro-regions, or neighbourhood housing units, of the Khrushchev period, typically five- to nine-story apartment buildings built predominantly of yellowish brick. Farther out, the neighbourhoods are characterized by high-rise buildings (20 or more stories), made of standardized, prefabricated concrete sections. Commonly the street levels of the buildings are occupied by shops. Streets are broad and tree-lined. Between the densely populated micro-regions are wedge-shaped areas of open land, notably the extensive Izmaylovsky Park in the east, Sokolniki Park and large forest tracts to the northeast, and on the north the grounds of the permanent Exhibition of National Economic Achievements. Nearby, in Dzerzhinsky Park at Ostankino, is the 1,758-foot television tower.

In the sea of new building, individual monuments of the past, such as the 17th-century Church of the Intercession in Medvedkovo, survive. Moscow's growth has engulfed a number of former country estates, the mansions of which date mostly from the period of classical architecture. On the east side of the city is Kuskovo, once the estate of the Sheremetyev family, its palace built in the 1770s, a church, hermitage, and Baroque grotto. To the south is the Uzkoe mansion, formerly belonging to the Trubetskoy family; to the north are the Petrovsky Palace (built by Kazakov in 1775–82) and, best known of all, the Ostankino Palace (1790–98). In the southeastern suburbs is the former village of Kolomenskoye, once a summer residence of the princes of Moscow. Its most remarkable architectural ensemble of buildings is dominated by the tower of the Church of the Ascension (1532). The Kazan Church and the gatehouse both date from the later 17th century. The surrounding park has a collection of examples of early Russian wooden architecture, brought from various parts of the country. In the nearby village of Dyakovo is the ornate Church of St. John the Baptist, built in 1557.

Beyond the newest suburbs are remaining areas of open land and forest within the Ring Road, together with the satellite industrial towns and dormitory suburbs that were included within the extended boundaries of the city of Moscow in 1960. The principal satellites are Babushkin to the north, with textile mills and a large number of commuters, Perovo to the east, with major marshaling yards and engineering and chemical factories, Lyublino to the southeast, Kuntsevo to the west, and Tushino to the northwest. In the mid-1980s several areas outside the Ring Road—including the suburban city of Solntsevo (now the Solntsevsky District [rayon]) to the southwest—were added to Moscow. Another part of Moscow, the new town of Zelenograd, established in 1963, is several miles north of the Ring Road.