Okhotny Ryad

Stand still for a moment and listen. Beneath your feet, a metro train slows with a long electric sigh. Above you, traffic runs in wide lanes toward the Kremlin walls. The air carries exhaust, wet stone and coffee from somewhere underground. This is Okhotny Ryad, one of the most layered addresses in Moscow. It is a street, a metro station and a shopping centre, all stacked on top of an old market that has vanished.

The name itself is the first clue. Okhotny Ryad means Hunters' Row. For centuries, this was where hunters and traders brought game into the city to sell. Think of hares, grouse, ducks and geese hanging from wooden stalls. Later the market grew to include meat, fish, poultry and every kind of provision. A row, in old Moscow trade, was a line of shops selling one type of goods. This row fed the city.

Picture the scene in the nineteenth century. Low buildings with shops on the ground floor. Barrels, crates and sacks on the pavement. Traders calling out prices, and cooks from noble houses arriving early to choose the best birds. Writers who knew old Moscow, including the journalist Vladimir Gilyarovsky, described the noise, the crowds and the mud of this market. It was loud, crowded and not especially clean. It was also very close to the seat of power, just a short walk from Red Square.

That closeness explains what happened next. In the late 1920s and the 1930s, the Soviet government began a great reconstruction of central Moscow. The old trading rows did not fit the new vision of a grand socialist capital. The market stalls were cleared away. Whole blocks of small buildings were demolished. In their place came wide avenues, large state buildings and open squares built for parades and crowds. The street you see today is mostly a product of that decade.

Here is something many visitors miss. The busy road in front of you was once much narrower, and the market spread into side lanes that no longer exist. Old photographs show a tight, crooked streetscape. If you compare them with the view now, very little matches. The name survived, but almost everything it described is gone. In a sense, Okhotny Ryad is a street that carries the memory of a market, not the market itself.

Look along the street for the long grey building with a heavy, serious front. This was built in the 1930s for Soviet planning institutions. Since the 1990s, it has housed the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. So the place where hunters once sold ducks is now where national laws are debated. The building is not open for casual visits, and security is visible, so it is best admired from the pavement.

Near the corner with Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street stands a much older and more graceful building. This is the House of Unions. Before the revolution, it was the Noble Assembly, where Moscow's aristocracy held balls and concerts. It was rebuilt in the late eighteenth century in a calm, classical style, with columns and pale walls. Inside is the famous Hall of Columns. In the Soviet era, this hall served a darker purpose. The bodies of Lenin and later Stalin lay in state here, and huge crowds queued along these streets to pass by.

On the other side of the street, toward the Kremlin, rises the bulk of the Hotel Moskva. The original hotel was built in the 1930s on part of the old market site. Its front was famously uneven, with two different wings. A popular story says the architects showed Stalin two designs on one sheet, and he signed in the middle, so both were built. Historians treat this tale as legend, not documented fact. The old hotel was demolished in the 2000s, and a close copy of its facade now stands in its place as a luxury hotel.

Now think about what lies below you. The Okhotny Ryad metro station opened in 1935 as part of the very first Moscow metro line. That line was a showpiece of the Soviet state, and its stations were designed to impress ordinary passengers. This one is a working station, not the most decorated in the city, but it is one of the oldest. Today it connects with neighbouring stations, so streams of people pass through its tunnels at every hour.

The second surprise is even deeper. In the 1990s, builders dug out the ground under Manezhnaya Square, right beside the street, to create a large underground shopping centre. It also took the name Okhotny Ryad. During the excavation, archaeologists found a huge number of objects from old Moscow. They uncovered coins, tools, pottery and the remains of an old stone bridge over the Neglinnaya River. Some of these finds are now shown in a small museum of Moscow archaeology nearby, built around the bridge remains.

That river is still here, too, in a way. The Neglinnaya once flowed openly past the Kremlin walls. In the nineteenth century, it was enclosed in an underground pipe, and today it runs out of sight. On the square, a chain of fountains with bronze figures follows a line that recalls the old river course. The sculptures, by the artist Zurab Tsereteli, show characters from Russian fairy tales. Children often climb near them, and the sound of the water softens the roar of the traffic.

If you go down into the shopping centre, look up. Glass domes in the square above let daylight fall into the lower floors. On a grey Moscow day, this light feels pale and even. On a bright day, it throws sharp patches across the floor. The centre is busy with shops and food courts, and it can feel very modern. But remember that you are walking through the same ground where traders once argued over prices, and where a river ran before the city covered it.

So take one more look around. The Duma building, the old Noble Assembly, the hotel facade and the glass domes all sit within a few minutes' walk. Each comes from a different era, and each replaced something older. As you walk away, toward Red Square or along Tverskaya Street, listen again for the trains under your feet. They run through ground that was once a market, and long before that, a riverbank at the edge of a young city.