Arbatskaya Square, Moscow

Some 800 metres west of the Kremlin walls, in the historic center of Moscow, lies Arbatskaya Square (Russian: Arbatskaya Ploshchad), one of the oldest squares in the city. Home to the Arbatskaya metro station, this square is a busy transport hub and the meeting point of several vital arteries of Moscow: New Arbat, Gogolevsky Boulevard, Znamenka and Vozdvizhenka Streets, as well as the Boulevard Ring.

A few steps away you will find yourself on the picturesque “Old” Arbat street. Part of the square adjacent to it is called the Arbat Gate (Russian: Arbatskie Vorota), and is the former site of one of the ten gates of the old city wall, known as the White City (Russian: Belyi Gorod). Back in the 16th-18th centuries the wall followed the path of today's Boulevard Ring, and was demolished in the 1750s-1770s.

Presently, Arbat Square is dominated by the vast New Arbat avenue. Back in the 1960s, before the major reconstruction, the square was sitting slightly to the south of its current location, on the line of old Arbat Street and the vestibule of the Arbatskaya metro station.

In the early 19th century, the area was home to the Arbatsky Theater, which perished in the Fire of Moscow of 1812. Another notable landmark of the past, situated in the south part of the square, was the Arbat Fountain. Originally a fire reservoir (1840s), it would later become purely decorative, refitted in 1945 with sculptures and granite slabs in Stalinist style, only to be destroyed in the 1960s.