Petrovka Street is a street in Moscow, Russia that runs north from Kuznetsky Most and Theatral Square up past Strastnoy Boulevard and Petrovsky Boulevard.
The street takes its name from the St. Peter's Monastery, situated at the top of the hill, at the intersection of the street and the Boulevard Ring. The street is a home to upscale shops, offices, and night clubs, such as the historic Petrovka Passazh and TsUM. Perhaps the most famous building is the Moscow Criminal Police (Petrovka, 38). The Petrovka Theatre, built in 1780 at the intersection of Petrovka and Okhotny Ryad, has been known as the Bolshoi Theatre since 1824.
The street ends just before the Garden Ring, where the Hermitage Garden is located.
# The big department store TsUM.
# Upper St Peter Monastery (Vysoko-Petrovskiy monastery).
# Virgin of Bogolubovo Church (Tserkov vo imya Bogolubskoy Ikony Bozhiey Matery).
The nearest metro is Teatralnaya, located on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line.
More information: This street runs parallel with Bolshaya Dmitrovka, and takes its name from Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery, which has stood here since the 14th century. Long ago the street ran next to the banks of the Neglinnaya. When this river was culverted in the early 19th century, Petrovka was turned into a street of fashionable shops. It became a busy trading street, where expensive Russian shops grew up alongside foreign ones. Under the New Economic Policy Petrovka remained a fashionable place to shop.
In 1924 the first signal post in Moscow was put up at the junction of Petrovka and Kuznetsky Most Street. It was a pillar with a big arrow which when placed horizontally would cut off the flow of traffic when necessary. This same junction was the site of the first Moscow traffic lights in 1930 or 1931.
Up to 1947 at the junction with Kuznetsky Most there was a big house at No. 5. This site is now occupied by a public garden and a row of shops. In the early 19th century the house was owned by a rich landowner, Anna Annenkova. This elderly lady was famous throughout Moscow for her whims. Before going to bed, instead of putting on her night clothes she would get dressed in a ball gown, silk stockings and elegant shoes so that she was ready at any moment of the night to depart for a ball. Her son Ivan Annenkov was a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment. He frequently accompanied his mother to Kuznetsky Most to De Moncy, a shop of Paris fashions. One of the senior shop assistants there was Polina Gebl, daughter of a French officer. She was entranced by the young officer and fell in love with him, and he returned her affections. After the Decembrist uprising of 1825 in which young Ivan Annenkov took part, he was exiled to Siberia and Polina Gebl decided to accompany her lover into exile. In St. Petersburg the famous French fencing master Augustien Grisier helped her with money and the necessary contacts. Formerly he had given fencing lessons to both Ivan Annenkov and Alexander Pushkin. Polina was allowed to go to Siberia, and when she arrived at the town of Chita, she found that a licence for her wedding had just arrived from the highest authority. The groom and witnesses were brought to church under escort, Polina had very quickly sewn neckties for the witnesses out of cambric handkerchiefs, and Yelizaveta Naryshkina provided candles, which she had stored up for the hard Siberian winter.
These events were all described in Alexandre Dumas' novel Notes of a Fencing Master. Nicholas I was irritated by the novel and had it banned, but everybody who could get hold of it, including the Empress, read it in secret with great excitement. For the rest of her life after her return from exile Polina Annenkova wore a bracelet bound by the iron ring taken from her husband's shackle chains.
Stoleshnikov Lane leads off the left hand side of Petrovka. Its name comes from the settlement of stoleshiki who lived here in the 16th and 17th centuries. They made table-cloths for the Tsar's court.
The house at No. 9 was constructed in 1874 by the architect Karneyev. Vladimir Gilyarovsky, or 'Uncle Gilay' as he was affectionately known in Moscow, lived here from 1886 to 1935. Here in Stoleshniky he was visited by Tolstoy, Gorky. Chekhov, Kuprin, Bunin, Mayakovsky and Yesenin. Tolstoy loved to relax on a yellow wooden sofa in the hall, while for some reason Chekhov was much taken with the cast-iron umbrella stand which was also in the hall. But the most prominent place was occupied by a poker, which had been bent by Gilyarovsky in silent testimony to his great strength.
On the left can be seen No. 19, which was built in the late l9th century by the architect Kondratenko. In 1903-1904 Chekhov, who was then seriously ill, rented a flat on the second floor in part of the separate building on the right, behind the archway. There was no lift at that time and as Chekhov himself put it, going upstairs was 'the feat of a great martyr'. His play The Cberry Orchard was read for the first time in this flat.
A little further down the same side at No. 25 is one of the best examples of Moscow classicism. It is a magnificent mansion constructed in the 1790s by Kazakov for Gubin, a rich merchant. In the 1880s Gubin's heirs gave over the central part of the house to be used by Kreisman's private gymnasium. This school became well-known because it was prepared to accept pupils expelled from state high schools. But even this school found it necessary to expel the poet Valery Bryusov, since as editor of the school magazine he published atheistic and republican ideas. Bryusov completed his education at the Lev Polivanov Gymnasium on Prechistenka, which was the most liberal and advanced in Moscow. This building now houses the Institute of Rheumatology.
No. 8 on the right side was by Klein in 1905 for the French wine company Dupres. This famous company was renowned for the quality of its wines. Herzen, the writer and thinker, in describing student parties of his time, observes in My Past and Thoughts: 'The wine, naturally, was brought from Dupres on Petrovka." 'Portwine and sherry from Dupres', were served at the Oblonsky's dinner described in Anna Karenina.
The next building at No. 10 is the Petrovsky Passazh (arcade), a well-known shop which was built in 1906 by the architect Kalugin. The bas-relief Worker, designed by the architect Manizer, was fixed to the building's facade in 1921 as part of the plan for sculptural propaganda. In the early 1930s the 'Airship-building' Trust, which worked on designs for the first Soviet dirigibles, was to be found in the second row of the arcade.
During the New Economic Policy in 1922 the first fashion house in Moscow opened its doors at No. 26. At that time the first fashion magazine was published, and among its authors were Anna Akhmatova and Fedin, Shaginyan and E Sologub. When in 1923 the first film with fashion news appeared, Antonina Nezhdanova was used as a model. This fashion house was engaged in propaganda for proletarian clothing - clothing specially made for work.
Krapivensky Lane turns to the right off Petrovka, and takes its name from Krapivin, who owned a house here in the 18th century. Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery rises up immediately behind the house. It was founded in 1380 in the village of Vysokoye by Prince Dmitry Donskoi after his return from the Battle of Kulikovo. This site was once occupied by the ancient Bogolubskaya Church of Ivan Kalita. It is said that when the Muscovite Prince Ivan Kalita passed this place, he suddenly saw a high mountain covered with snow which all of a sudden melted away, and then the mountain also disappeared. He described this vision to Metropolitan Pyotr a few days before his death. The Metropolitan explained that the high mountain was the Prince, and the snow was the humble Metropolitan who should take leave of this world before Kalita. To make a memorial to this miraculous vision Kalita built the Church of the Bogolyubskaya Icon to the Mother of God, which later became the main church of Visoko-Petrovsky Monastery. The monastery came under the patronage of a boyar family, the Naryshkins, and in particular Natalia Naryshkina, the mother of Peter the Great. In 1812 the convent was ransacked by the French, and in Bogolubskaya Church Marshal Mortie sentenced some local people to death for setting fires.
Further down the same side at No. 38 there is a mansion owned in the 18th century by Prince Shcherbatov. Later it was bought by the state, and from 1816 Petrovskiye police barracks were accommodated here. In 1834 the poet Ogarev was arrested and jailed here, and later he wrote his poem Jail about this experience. In the Soviet period this house was used by the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department, which immortalised the address of the house - Petrovka 38.
Karetny Ryad is the continuation of Petrovka. In olden days carts (telegl) were sold here and the street was called Telezhny Ryad. From the end of the 18th century coaches (karety) were sold here and its modern name comes from this trade. When the regiments of Napoleon's Army came to Moscow, the French military leaders hurried to Karetny Ryad to select coaches for travelling around Moscow. The coach traders set fire to their shops so that they would not fall into the hands of their enemies. Coaches were sold here up to the revolution and the former coach shops remain on the right side of the street at No. 6.
On the left-hand side of Karetny Ryad is the famous Hermitage Garden. In 1894 the businessman Yakov Shchukin, a former footman, rented some land on Karetny Ryad and laid out the Hermitage Garden here. In those days the word 'garden' meant a place for putting on theatrical shows, plays based on fairy-tales, and other attractions. Shchukin specially took the same name for his garden as that formerly used by the impresario Lentovsky for his garden on Seieznyovka Street, which enjoyed great popularity. It had just closed down, and Shchukin counted on attracting the clientele from Lentovsky's garden to come to his. In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a fashion to describe secluded palaces as a 'hermitage' (from the French for a hermit's house). In Moscow on the other hand it became fashionable to name restaurants and other public places in the same way.
In 1896 in the 'Hermitage' open-air theatre Muscovites were treated for the first time to a showing of a film from the renowned Lumier brothers' studio. Today this theatre is known as the Zerkalny Theatre. The stages of the 'Hermitage' were the first home of two famous Moscow theatre companies: on 14 October 1898 the premiere of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich was presented here as the first production by the Moscow Arts Theatre, which later moved to Kamergersky Lane. The Mossoviet Theatre used these premises up to 1948. Today the 'Hermitage Garden' accommodates the Moscow Miniature Theatre, the Summer Mirror Theatre, a small concert hall, and the theatre studio 'Sfera'.
