We attended a tour on the Kitaygorod wall. We tried to find what was left of it. And to understand what it was like before.
It should be said that this wall was destroyed several times. Rebuilt. And the last time they started to destroy it was in the 1930s in the USSR. First, they demolished a section from the Vladimirskiye to the Varvarskiye Gates. Then part of the wall collapsed during the construction of a high-rise building in Zaryadye. There was a long debate about what to do with the permitted section of the wall. For example, the Academy of Sciences opposed the demolition and was in favor of restoring the historical monument. Other organizations were for the demolition. As a result, Stalin personally allowed the wall along the embankment to be demolished.
Now there are only fragments of the wall and they have been left as a historical monument.
It must be said that the wall was always in the way in times of peace. They made the so-called “Breaching Gates”. The passages through the towers were narrow and there were few of them. Traffic jams arose. Therefore, they dismantled parts of the wall and drove through these breaches. And when there was a threat of enemy attack, they quickly restored the breaches in the wall.
What is left of the Kitaygorod wall? We started our inspection from the Voskresensky Gate, through which we enter Red Square. There is a piece of the wall next to this gate. But both the gate and the wall are new buildings (restored in the 90s).
Resurrection Gate (from personal archive)
The next piece of the wall with the tower, in which the restaurant “Old Tower” is located. Also new buildings.
Old tower (from personal archive)
Behind the Metropol Hotel there is a section of wall and a round tower on the corner. These buildings are probably the most historical of what we saw (relatively speaking, as a large section of the wall is almost completely covered with construction netting – under repair).
Wall and tower behind the Metropol (from personal archive)
We didn’t go to the next remaining piece of the wall, because we were all frozen. We decided that it would be inhumane to examine everything in winter.
Sources: https://www.zaryadyepark.ru/history/istoriya_kitay_gorodskoy_steny.html