Ulitsa Tverskaya

As the line of the road that led from the northern tip of the Kremlin to the ancient town of Tver, ulitsa Tverskaya had been an important route for centuries. Later that road was extended all the way to the new capital on the Baltic Sea, St. Petersburg. Ulitsa Tverskaya is Moscow's main shopping artery, attracting shoppers hungry for the latest trends. The lovely, wide boulevard, a tribute to the grandiose reconstruction projects of the Stalinist era, is lined with cafés, banks and exchanges, shops, and hotels. Some of the city's best and biggest stores are on the ground floors of massive apartment buildings, some quite attractive and graced by a fine art nouveau style. On a sunny day, Tverskaya is an especially pleasant walk. Ploshchad Pushkinskaya is about halfway up the street from the Kremlin, and it is a popular meeting point for Muscovites. Tverskaya was given its present form in the mid-1930s—until then it was narrow and twisting, lined in places with wooden houses. From 1932 to 1990 the road was known as Gorky Street, in honor of the writer Maxim Gorky, the father of Soviet socialist realism. In 1990 the first section of the street, leading from the heart of town to ploshchad Triumfalnaya, was given back its prerevolutionary name of ulitsa Tverskaya. A year later, the second section, ending at the Belorussian railway station, was also returned to its old name of Tverskaya-Yamskaya.