16 Best Sights in Ulitsa Bolshaya Nikitskaya, Moscow

This large, white, modern building perched along the riverbank is the headquarters of the Russian government and the prime minister. Before the August 1991 coup, the "White House" was the headquarters of the Russian Republic of the USSR. In October 1993 the building was shelled in response to the rioting and near-coup by Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and parliamentarians. They had barricaded themselves in the White House after Boris Yeltsin's decision to dissolve parliament and hold new elections. Today the building is also known as the Dom Pravitelstvo, or Government House. It sits directly across the Moskva River from the Radisson Royal Hotel, once the Ukraina, one of the seven "Stalin Gothic" skyscrapers built in Moscow in the mid-20th century.

Like Moscow State University, this classical church was designed by Matvei Kazakov and built in the 1820s. The church is most famous as the site where the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin married the younger Natalya Goncharova; Pushkin died six years later, in a duel defending her honor. There is a kitschy and much despised statue of the couple on the square outside the church. (History has judged Natalya harshly; she was probably not guilty of adultery, although she did enjoy flirting.) The statue in the park to the left of the church as you face it is of Alexey Tolstoy, a relative of Leo's and a well-known Soviet writer of historical novels. The church stood empty and abandoned for many years, but after major repairs, religious services have resumed.

It's believed that Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) used this large mansion, the administrative offices of the Writers' Union, as a model for the Rostov home in War and Peace. A statue of Tolstoy stands in the courtyard. Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) set part of his satire of Soviet life, The Master and Margarita, here. The beautiful wood-paneled dining room is open to the public.

Fyodor Chaliapin (1873–1938), one of the world's greatest opera singers, lived in this beautifully restored manor house from 1910 to 1922. Chaliapin was stripped of his Soviet citizenship while on tour in France in 1922; he never returned to Russia again. The Soviets turned his home into an apartment building, and until restorations in the 1980s, the building contained 60 communal apartments. With help from Chaliapin's family in France, the rooms have again been arranged and furnished as they were when the singer lived here. The walls are covered with works of art given to Chaliapin by talented friends, such as the artists Mikhail Vrubel and Isaac Levitan. Also on display are Chaliapin's colorful costumes, which were donated to the museum by his son. When you reach the piano room, you'll hear original recordings of Chaliapin singing his favorite roles. Entrance is from inside the courtyard. English-language tours are available and should be reserved ahead of time.

The sign "Dr. Chekhov" still hangs from the door of this home where Chekhov resided from 1886 to 1890. The rooms are arranged as they were when he lived here, and some of the furniture, such as two sturdy desks covered in green felt, belonged to the author's family. One room showcases photos and memorabilia from Chekhov's trek to the island of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East. Overall, the materials on display at the museum are not particularly enthralling, so unless you are a Chekhov diehard, this is far from an essential stop.

This street is where the tsars' cooks lived, and hence the Russian name, Povarskaya. After the revolution the street was renamed Vorovskovo, in honor of a Soviet diplomat who was assassinated by a Russian, but it returned to its prerevolutionary name in the 1990s. It's an important center of the Moscow artistic community, with the film actors' studio, the Russian Academy of Music (the Gnesin Institute), and the Tsentralny Dom Literatorov (Central House of Writers) all located here. Many of the old mansions have been preserved, and the street retains its prerevolutionary tranquillity and charm. In the first flush days of summer your walk is likely to be accompanied by a rousing drum set or tinkling piano sonata issuing from the open windows of the music school. Note the other streets in this small neighborhood have similar culinary names such as Bread (Khlebny), Table (Stolovy), and Tablecloth (Skaterny) lanes.

This marvelous and wonderfully preserved example of Moscow art nouveau was the home of Maxim Gorky from 1931 to 1936. Sometimes called the Ryabushinsky Mansion, it was built in 1901 for the wealthy banker of that name and designed by the architect Fyodor Shektel. (If you arrived in Moscow by train, you may have noticed the fanciful Yaroslav station, another of his masterpieces, just opposite the Leningrad railway station.) Although Gorky was a champion of the proletariat, his home was rather lavish. Gorky himself apparently hated the style moderne, as art nouveau was termed back then. Those who don't, however, are charmed by this building of ecru brick and stone painted pink and mauve atop gray foundations. A mosaic of irises forms a border around the top of most of the house, and a fanciful yet utilitarian iron fence matches the unusual design of the window frames. The spectacular interior includes a stained-glass roof and a twisting marble staircase that looks like a wave of gushing water. Tours in English are available.

Letters, manuscripts, and pictures of the great proletarian writer will be of great interest to Gorky fans. There are also portraits by Nesterov and Serov and a remarkable photograph of Gorky playing chess with Lenin on the Italian island of Capri, where Gorky made his home for many years both before and after the Soviets took power. Gorky never lived here, but there is a miniature wooden reproduction of his childhood home, complete with village yard and outbuildings.

Russia's oldest university was founded in 1755 by the father of Russian science, Mikhail Lomonosov. The neoclassical buildings here were originally designed by Matvei Kazakov in 1786–93. They were rebuilt and embellished in the mid-19th century, after the 1812 fire. The law and journalism schools are still housed in these quarters. The university's main campus is on Sparrow Hills (formerly Lenin Hills), southwest of the city center, in the largest of the so-called Stalin Gothic skyscrapers.

Along one side of this square, cars race along the Garden Ring, the major circular road surrounding Moscow. If you approach the ring from Bolshaya Nikitskaya ulitsa or Povarskaya ulitsa, the first thing to catch your eye will be the 22-story skyscraper directly across Novinsky bulvar. One of the seven Stalin Gothics, this one is 525 feet high. The ground floor, home to a grand supermarket in Soviet times, is now occupied by clothing stores and a cafeteria called Central Restaurant House—this is worth peeking into to admire the towering ceilings and stained-glass windows inside. The rest of the building contains apartments. This area saw heavy fighting during the uprisings of 1905 and 1917 (the plaza was previously called Ploshchad Vosstaniya, or Insurrection Square). The Barrikadnaya (Barricade) metro station is very close by. Cross the ulitsa Barrikadnaya and bear right and down the hill; you'll see people streaming into the station to your right.

This square was named after the vorota (gates) of the white-stone fortification walls that once stood here. On one side of the square is a modern building with square windows; this is the office of ITAR-TASS, once the official news agency of the Soviet Union and the mouthpiece of the Kremlin. In the park in the center of the square stands a monument to Kliment Timiryazev, a famous botanist.

The busy road intersecting Bolshaya Nikitskaya ulitsa at one end of the square is the Bulvarnoye Koltso (Boulevard Ring), which forms a semicircle around the city center. It begins at the banks of the Moskva River, just south of the Kremlin, and after curving eastward, then south, it reaches the riverbank again after several miles, near the mouth of the Yauza River, northeast of the Kremlin. Its path follows the lines of the 16th-century white-stone fortification wall that gave Moscow the name "White City." The privilege of living within its walls was reserved for the court nobility and craftsmen serving the tsar. The wall was torn down in 1775, on orders from Catherine the Great, and was replaced by the current Boulevard Ring. The perfect way to get a good view of the inner city is to slowly walk along the ring—this is best done on the weekend or late at night to avoid traffic on the boulevard. Running along its center is a broad strip of trees and flowers, dotted with playgrounds and benches. Summer brings out a burst of outdoor cafés, ice-cream vendors, and strolling lovers along the boulevard.

Moscow's only Anglican church, built in 1884, served the British-expatriate community for more than 40 years, including a mass for Queen Victoria after her death in 1901. No bells were rung then, however, because only Orthodox churches were allowed to have them. Instead the tower was used as a strong room for British merchants. The 1917 revolution ended both spiritual and secular functions, however, and the church was closed. The pews are believed to have been burned in the harsh winters of the early 1920s, and the stained glass was replaced when the building was converted into a recording studio. Today the Church of England has reacquired the property, and it's again a vibrant, working church and a gathering place for the community. Regular services include morning prayer on Sundays at 8 a.m. and evening prayer on Wednesdays and Sundays at 6:30 p.m.

Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938) was a Russian actor, director, and producer, as well as the founder of the Stanislavsky Method, the catalyst for method acting. He was also one of the founders of the Moscow Art Theater. Stanislavsky lived and worked in this house, an elegant 19th-century building with stunning painted ceilings, during the last 17 years of his life. The house has been kept as it was while he lived here, showcasing a small practice theater, the various leather chairs he preferred, a few of his old theater costumes, and other memorabilia. The entrance to the museum is through the courtyard.

The famous Tchaikovsky Music Competition takes place every four years in this prestigious music school's grand performance space. Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Tchaikovsky are among the famous composers who worked at the conservatory, founded in 1866 and at its current location since 1870. Concerts are performed almost daily in the school's various performance spaces, which include the smaller Rachmaninovsky and Maly Halls. Both of these host chamber music concerts. Tickets, almost always affordable, are sold at a small window directly on the sidewalk on ulitsa Bolshaya Nikitskaya east of the main hall. If you'd rather not attend a performance, you can also just sit back with a coffee and listen to rehearsals and concerts from the summer garden of the Coffeemania here, near a statue of Tchaikovsky designed by Vera Mukhina, a famous Soviet sculptor.

Glass cases filled to capacity with artwork and clothing from the Central Asian republics, China, Japan, and Korea make up the museum's large permanent collection. The museum itself is a cool and calm place to take a leisurely stroll. Most of the placards in the museum are in Russian, but there are a few annotations in English.

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941), the renowned poet, lived in an apartment on the second floor of this building from 1914 to 1922. Today the building houses not only a museum dedicated to her but also a cultural center that arranges international literary evenings, musical events, and annual conferences covering the poet and the Silver Age (1890s–1917) in general. You must ring the bell to enter the museum, which begins on the second floor. Although the rooms are decorated in the style of the early 1900s, they are not as they were when Tsvetaeva lived here. The poetry written on the wall in her bedroom has been re-created. The children's room has some stuffed animals in place of the real animals—a dog, a squirrel, and a turtle, to name a few—that Tsvetaeva kept in her home.