Khokhlovskaya Square. Khokhlovskaya Square Khokhlovskaya Square amphitheater how to get there

Khokhlovskaya Square located in the center of Moscow and shares boulevards with each other. The first mentions of it date back to the 17th century.

origin of name

Accurate determination of the origin of the toponym“Khokhlovskaya Square” still doesn’t exist. Among researchers of the history of Moscow, 2 versions are discussed.

The first are inclined to associate the name with the nearby one, on which the Little Russian or, as they still called it, the “Khokhlovsky” courtyard stood in the seventeenth century.

The argument against is that the distance between the territories is too large. And if today six hundred meters in a straight line is not a big deal, then at that time it was a bit far.

The second hypothesis interprets that the name was given to the square, which is visible from this place through the houses in Khokhlovsky Lane.

History of Khokhlovskaya Square

Khokhlovskaya Square can be more defined as part of Pokrovsky Boulevard, especially since the houses attached to it have never existed and do not exist.

On its northern border there are two old hotel buildings belonging to the Pokrovsky Gate Square. They were erected at the beginning of the 19th century as part of the opening of hotels in the Mother See of Moscow, which were supposed to replace the archaic inns by that time. The decree on this was signed personally by Paul I.

Along the eastern side there is a former building built in 1936. Its remoteness is explained by the fact that at one time - according to the general plan for the reconstruction of Moscow from 1935 - a new highway was supposed to pass here to the Lefortovo and Izmailovo districts, for which a new “red line” was planned, on which the house was built.

Adjacent to Khokhlovskaya Square from the west is the former apartment building of the Olovyanishnikov family, which appeared here in 1913. The construction was supervised by the architect Sergei Flegontovich. The history of the house is connected with the fate of the Lithuanian poet Jurgis Kazimirovich Baltrushaitis, who lived here with his wife Maria, the owners’ own daughter. Additional 2 floors were added to the house already under the Soviets.

Until 1954, the Big Parade Square, which stood in front of the Pokrovskys (then already the Dzerzhinskys), came close to the southern side of the square. Then the area was landscaped and Pokrovsky Boulevard was extended here.

Modern view and realities

Until recently, Khokhlovskaya Square had a very depressing appearance: it was turned into a parking lot.

In the early 2000s, an underground parking project was developed and excavation work began in 2007. It was then that a fragment of the former walls of the White City that had survived through time was discovered. Construction was suspended, the pit was fenced off and put under a canopy.

Only 3 years later - in 2010 - the protective government authorities represented by the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage allowed work to begin again, but with one condition - to preserve the wall and make it freely accessible for tourists and connoisseurs of antiquity. Investors were not satisfied with this and abandoned the project.

Already under Sergei Sobyanin, a discussion thread was opened on the city portal “Active Citizen” among Muscovites about what to do next with Khokhlovskaya Square. The majority spoke in favor of museumification of both the place itself and the uncovered ancient monument - the walls of the White City.

In 2017, reconstruction and improvement of the territory began and, first of all, the former pit was divided into two tiered zones.

The upper one, located on the same level as the boulevard, has been turned into a pedestrian zone with benches, green spaces and bicycle parking.

At the bottom they left a fragment of the Belogorodskaya wall, strengthened the foundation pit with pigmented concrete, giving it the appearance of natural stone, and decorated it with decorative grape vines. The descent here was designed in the form of an amphitheater, the steps of which were lined with wood.

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Today we will talk about the new archaeological park-amphitheater, which is on Khokhlovskaya Square, very close to the Pokrovsky Gate Square. This is a long-suffering place in the sense that ten years ago on Khokhlovskaya Square it was decided, as usual, to build a new shopping and entertainment center with underground parking. This place is historical and delicious, and besides, it was not built up. We began to implement this investment contract and in the process of archaeological work a unique archaeological site was discovered - the foundation of the ancient wall of the White City. Then the authorities stopped the work. Probably many remember that the Boulevard Ring appeared precisely thanks to the demolition of the historical wall of the White City. As a result, the facility stood idle for a long time, it was constantly flooded with seasonal precipitation, and in place of the lonely pit, even a “duck swamp” appeared...) And this is on the Boulevard Ring!

Muscovites recently unanimously voted to make the found fragment of the White City wall available as an open-air archaeological site. And, lo and behold, on the occasion of City Day and the 870th anniversary of Moscow in 2017, this first archaeological park in Moscow was opened. For some reason they don’t write much about it on the Internet, so I specially came to Pokrovka to understand for myself what we got as a result?! This report will attempt a similar answer and tell about the White City and the history of the construction of this archaeological park on the Boulevard Ring.

Back in March of this year, 2017, this conditionally mothballed object looked so sad and discouraging.
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The found fragment of the old wall of the White City was still covered with a long canopy.
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And fortunately, in the fall, Muscovites were pleased with this ennobled part of Old Moscow.
Next, I will talk about why the White City is called White and briefly discuss its history.
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Historical Moscow was divided into districts. The administrative center was fenced by the Kremlin wall, the church and trade center by the Kitai-Gorod wall, and noble people, exempt from taxes, lived in the White City, which was fenced by its own wall, which later became known as the White City. It was built at the end of the 16th century by the Russian architect Fyodor Kon, but he took the Roman canons of construction as a basis - not brick on brick, but chaotic masonry. It was she who made it possible during the Time of Troubles, when the wall of the White City became the arena of military battles, to avoid its complete destruction. During the time of Catherine the Great in 1780, the dilapidated wall was dismantled into bricks, and in its place a Boulevard Ring for walking began to be formed, said Leonid Kondrashev, the chief archaeologist of Moscow (interview, Komsomolskaya Pravda).
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In general, the wall is called Belogorodskaya or Belgorodskaya - it surrounded Moscow’s White City from the end of the 16th to the end of the 18th century. Presumably, this part of the city got its name from the color of the lime-washed wall. There is a version that only the foundation part of the wall was painted with lime. and basically the wall of the White City was red.

The wall was built under Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, in 1585-1591. by the architect Fyodor Savelyevich Kon on the site of wooden fortifications on an earthen rampart that burned down in 1571 during a raid by the Crimean Tatars. The Solovetsky chronicler of the early 17th century reports: “In the summer of 7097 of the same year, the White Stone City was built in Moscow and named Tsarev City, and founded in 93.”
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The wall of the White City on one side began from the Vodovzvodnaya Tower of the Kremlin, and on the other side it approached the corner tower of the Kitay-Gorod wall. A white stone was placed at the base of the wall (another possible explanation for its name), and the wall itself was made of large bricks and stuffed inside.
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Created in a very short time, this fortress wall suffered greatly during the Time of Troubles and, apparently, underwent some changes by the end of the 17th century. After the Northern War, it finally lost its fortification significance. The guards at the gates of the White City were removed and they stopped locking them at night. Muscovites began to dismantle the walls into bricks for their own homes. Many buildings in Moscow in the 18th century were built from Belgorod brick: for example, the Orphanage and the house of the Governor General on Tverskaya.
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Documents from which one can imagine the appearance of the White City wall are contradictory. The axonometric plans indicate different numbers of towers and gates, and they themselves are depicted differently. These images complement the descriptions of the wall made by various foreign travelers. In addition, the fortress walls built by Fyodor Kon after the wall of the White City have been preserved in Smolensk. They have been preserved and can serve as a visual analogue.

The Belgorod wall was higher than the Kitaygorod wall and, like the Kremlin wall, was crowned with battlements with “swallow tails”. Pavel Aleppsky notes the presence of machicles of mounted fighting and the inclination of the wall surface inward. The length of the wall is 10 km, thickness up to 4.5 m.
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N.I. Falkovsky in his book “Moscow in the History of Technology” writes that the wall of the White City had 17 blind towers, mostly rectangular in plan, covered with tetrahedral tents with several tiers of battle, and 10 travel towers that had three-tented endings (27 towers in total). A ditch filled with water was dug along the walls. The height of the towers ranged from 13 to 20 meters.
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The closest tower of the White City from today's Khokhlovskaya Square was Pokrovskaya. This is where it stood - this is Pokrovsky Gate Square. In the background is Chistye Prudy.
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And this is what Khokhlovskaya Square looked like in the 50s of the last century. This is the view from Khokhlovsky Lane.
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The surviving stonework, covering an area of ​​336 square meters, has been carefully restored by specialists. White stone parts, presumably the work of Italian masters, from dismantled Kremlin buildings of the first half of the 16th century, were treated with special solutions. The preserved heritage of that time is now freely available to all visitors. As a result, a modern open-air archaeological museum appeared on Khokhlovskaya Square.
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An open amphitheater was also created here. For this purpose, Khokhlovskaya Square was divided into two tiers: the upper one - on the same level with Pokrovsky Boulevard and the lower one - at the level of the White City wall. On the upper tier there will be a wide walking area with wooden benches for relaxation.
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In the near future, 15 bicycle parking areas will be installed here, as well as an information board, street lamps and lamps. On the lower tier, near a fragment of the White Wall, a space has been created for relaxation and holding various open-air events - you can go down into it via large steps. For the fortress of the lower tier, behind the wall of the White City, an additional wall support was erected from pigmented concrete, reminiscent of natural stone, and its surface is already entwined with young vines of girlish grapes.
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The improvement of Khokhlovskaya Square and the Boulevard Ring was completed by City Day, with the exception of trees that will be planted later.
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A couple more angles of the foundation of the White City fortress wall.
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It is not entirely clear why the retaining wall is almost black, although in the future it will still be covered with a solid wall of wild grapes) As we can see, large-scale illumination of fragments of the wall’s foundation has been created. It will be necessary to walk here sometime late in the evening and see how this archaeological site looks illuminated from the side.
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In general, if you compare “what was and what has become,” everything is of course good, but there is some feeling of emptiness, and perhaps this is just out of habit) Gradually, with the appearance of green trees right on the steps of the amphitheater (as I understand it) and around the object, Installed lamps and other necessary infrastructure, the place will probably acquire its cultural and historical zest.
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Sources:

Alisa Titko. Interview with Leonid Kondrashev, chief archaeologist of Moscow (Komsomolskaya Pravda).
Wikipedia

Fragment of the White City wall on Khokhlovskaya Square - a unique historical artifact, a cleared and museumized archeological monument of federal significance.

The ruin of a white stone foundation, about 50 meters long and 4.5 meters wide, is the largest fragment of the Belgorod Wall discovered in Moscow, the most preserved and the only one accessible to citizens and tourists. It became the central exhibit of an open-air archaeological park: Khokhlovskaya Square was planned in such a way as to make it as convenient as possible to view it from all sides. Located in a recess, a fragment of the wall is surrounded by an amphitheater, on the steps of which there are seats for passers-by to rest - thanks to this decision, it has become the central object in the composition of the square.

So that the ruin can be viewed at night, a lighting system is installed around it.

Belgorod Wall

The Belgorod Wall is one of the fortress walls of Moscow, surrounding the White City in the 16th-18th centuries.

The length of the wall was 10 kilometers, the thickness reached 4.5 meters. It is known that it was made of large bricks laid on top of a white stone base, and the inside was filled with rubble. However, it is impossible to establish exactly what it looked like, since the surviving evidence speaks of a different number of towers and gates (most often they talk about 27 towers, 10 of which were travel towers), and descriptions of the wall made by foreign travelers are quite contradictory. There is reason to believe that the walls of the White City were higher than the walls of Kitai-gorod and, like the Kremlin ones, ended with battlements.

The wall was erected in 1585-1591 (under Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich) according to the design of the architect Fedor Konya instead of the old wooden fortifications that burned down after the Tatar raid in 1571. However, by the middle of the 18th century, it lost its fortification significance: the guards were removed from its gates, and Muscovites began to slowly dismantle it into bricks for their own homes. In the 1770-1780s, the wall, which had become quite dilapidated and simply dangerous, was demolished, and trees were planted in its place - this is how the Belgorod Wall arose. Brick and stone from the base of the wall were used for the construction of city buildings (in particular, the Orphanage on Moskvoretskaya Embankment), and the townspeople quickly dismantled the remains for personal needs, so there was practically nothing left of the wall.

In 2007, during the construction of a shopping center with an underground 6-level parking lot on Khokhlovskaya Square, a large and well-preserved fragment of the white stone base (foundation) of the Belgorod Wall was discovered, after which the construction was frozen, and the foundation pit remained abandoned for a long time, since the city could not decide, what to do with the discovered artifact. It turned out to be impossible to bring it to the surface. Ultimately, it was decided to museumify the discovered ruin by creating an open-air archaeological park on Khokhlovskaya Square, and in 2017 the square was landscaped according to the design of French architects: it was made two-level, and a stepped amphitheater was built around a fragment of the wall.

To prevent the fragment from being destroyed by the vagaries of the weather, it was preserved by treating it with a special compound, and the area around it was laid out with a special coating that allows water to pass through well and dries quickly.

It is curious that only the upper part of the artifact is visible: the masonry can be traced to a depth of 0.6-1.5 meters, which still remains underground.

However, the width and solidity of the ruins make it possible to imagine the scale and size of the Belgorod Wall. Before its discovery and museumification, this could only be done mentally, but now citizens have the opportunity to see it in a living example.

Fragment of the White City wall located on Khokhlovskaya Square in the Basmanny district. You can get to it on foot from metro stations "China town" Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya and Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya lines, as well as "Chistye Prudy" Sokolnicheskaya.

It is not known exactly where the name of the square comes from. Probably, the square began to be called Khokhlovskaya after the nearby Khokhly area. Usually the name of the area is associated with Ukraine and indicates the proximity of Pokrovka Street, where there was a Little Russian (that is, Ukrainian) courtyard. However, from Khokhlov to the property in which the farmstead was located is more than 600 meters in a straight line. For old Moscow this is a huge distance. The memory of the Khokhly tract remains in the name of the Trinity Church in Khokhly (Khokhlovsky Lane, 12). The church is clearly visible from the square if you look along Khokhlovsky Lane.

Until 1954, a large parade ground in front of Khokhlovskaya Square adjoined the south. Since 1881, a narrow alley of trees has stretched along the parade ground. In 1954, on the site of the parade ground, trees were planted to extend Pokrovsky Boulevard here.

The northern border of the square is formed by a two-story building. The history of hotels at the gate began during the reign of Emperor Pavel Petrovich. The Moscow merchants turned to him with a request to arrange comfortable modern hotels in the city. Before this, there were no hotels in Moscow; there were inns and taverns that did not meet the requirements of modern times. The Emperor ordered the construction of new hotel buildings on the sides of the city gates in the White and Zemlyanoy cities. Projects completed by Vasily Stasov were sent from the capital, St. Petersburg. Two such hotels were built at the Pokrovsky Gate. The rear facade of the hotel formed the side of Khokhlovskaya Square.

The eastern side of the square is formed by one, built according to the design of the architect L.Z. Cherikover in 1936 for NKVD employees. In this comfortable house they could rest well after hard days of work and nights in the dungeons of the Lubyanka. The house is set at a large distance from the old red line. This is how the boulevards were supposed to widen according to the 1935 general plan. And the boulevards themselves, like Khokhlovskaya Square, should not have existed. There would be a wide highway around the center of Moscow.

The southern side of Khokhlovskaya Square is also occupied by only one house. It was built by the architect Sergei Flegontovich Voskresensky in 1913 as a profitable place for the famous merchants Olovyanishnikov. They specialized in casting bells and producing silver and gold jewelry primarily for the church. The large possession of the Olovyanishnikovs occupied the territory up to Pokrovka.

The Olovyanishnikovs' house was built on and redesigned inside during Soviet times. Along with the redevelopment, the memorial apartment of the Silver Age poet, later the Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania to the USSR, Jurgis Baltrusaitis, was destroyed. She was located on the fourth floor of the building in the wing facing Khokhlovsky Lane. Y. Baltrushaitis was married to M. I. Olovyanishnikova. Today there are offices of various companies in the house.

Construction work has begun on Khokhlovskaya Square itself. A multi-level underground parking lot was planned here, and the possibility of building a shopping center was considered. As a result of work in 2007, the foundations of the White City wall, built at the end of the 16th century by the sovereign architect Fyodor Kon, were discovered in the pit. They suggested preparing the wall for exhibition. Now construction has become unprofitable for the investor. There remains a pit, the fate of which has not been decided. The excavated remains of the wall are destroyed by bad weather.

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