Pedestrian Arbat - 30 years

Yesterday marked 30 years since, as the Arbat became the pedestrian street. But the story of the street goes back several centuries: the first mention of the Arbat refers to 1493. Then there was a fire in the church Nicholas Sands is where the flame from which, spreading to other buildings, burned almost all of Moscow. By the way, since that time and went saying: "From Moscow penny candle burned." Historically, in the neighboring alleyways settled artisans who gave them appropriate names: Plotnikov, Money, Silver. Arbat often suffered from fires, the largest of which, of course, happened in 1812. Since Arbat time to visit and quiet "Faubourg Saint-Germain Moscow" and "vocation" - "joy" - "a disaster" for bards, and the main street of the capital's intelligentsia, and a tourist mecca.

the restaurant "Prague" was built by the end of the XIX century to the beginning of the Arbat. Back then, there has been a reputation for cheap tavern that cabbies disparagingly called "Braga". But, thanks to a new owner - a merchant Tararykin - restaurant began to gain popularity quickly, and at the same time - and the image of the fashionable places. In 1913, the artist Ilya Repin gave a banquet there on the occasion of the restoration of his painting "Ivan the Terrible and his Son", the rugged Old Believers-a painter Abram Balashov. After the revolution opened the dining room "Mosselprom" in the building, described in particular in "12 chairs", and in 1954 opened a restaurant under the old name

In the early twentieth century, the new owner of the house №7 converted the interior of a fashionable novelty: cinematography. Rate the moving image, "Grand Parisien" once came from Khamovniki himself Leo Tolstoy. Classic Russian literature was enough for five minutes. "Struck by the absurdity of the presentation and perplexed as the audience fills numerous motion picture and finds pleasure in it" - so the writer later said about the newfangled entertainment

One of the oldest buildings of the Arbat - Khitrovo house, based on the Chamber are the middle of the XVIII century. The house is well-known fact that it was here Alexander Pushkin brought his young wife, Natalia Goncharova after the wedding. Young lived there for several months, but it was enough to open a Memorial Apartment Pushkin, and front of the house - to set the sculpture "Pushkin and Natalie", caused a sharp negative reviews from critics

On the ground floor of the hotel "Capital" is a restaurant with a cheap lunch. The rooming house "Capital" Ivan Bunin stopped in his youth, which it described in one of his stories. ! "It is unpleasant and boring ... I lived remains in memory: continually brings down the windows of snow, muffled thunder, call the Arbat tram, evening sweet smells of beer and the gas in a dimly lit restaurant"

During the revolutionary turmoil in 1905, Arbat became one of the centers of resistance. "You walk along Arbat, toward type in the blue shirt and a crumpled hat: to you the same, and your wife in the same sofa hidden fonts, if not more bombs" - recalled an eyewitness, writer Boris Zaitsev. Numerous barricades, shooting of unarmed people on Arbat Square, corpses throws at night on the boulevards, he would later describe Maxim Gorky in "Life of Klim Samgin"

On Arbat even have your own haunted house! In the middle of the XIX century it became the owners of the house №14 Prince Obolensky, one of whom killed himself there hands. The house was empty shortly afterwards, and in Moscow sinister rumors have spread, they say, in a family house wielding evil spirits and ghosts. When the police, after numerous requests from frightened residents of neighboring houses, finally raided, it turned out that the house was densely populated poor - which for safety and posed as ghosts. By the way, the reputation of the house in 1905 allowed it to hide the wounded revolutionaries on the barricades

The monument most famous "singer Arbat" - Bulat Okudzhava - located at the intersection of the street with Plotnikovo lane. Sculptor Georgy Frangulyan, by the way, is the author of two other monuments of the bard: in the courtyard of the Center of Education number 109 and on the grave at the cemetery Vagankovsky Okudzhavy

Another important attraction of the street - the wall Tsoi - appeared August 15, 1990, the day of death of the musician. Then one of the Arbat wall there was an inscription: "Today, Viktor Tsoi was killed." "Choi alive" - ​​immediately wrote the neighborhood

The first floor of the house №28, also known as House Skvortsova, has long been uninhabited. Until 1926 there was located a pharmacy "Medical leech", where they were sold to people on prescription

Ways of movement along the Arbat also changed over time. In 80-ies of the XIX century, cruised down the street tram and the tram was launched at the beginning of the zero-point of the twentieth century. In the 30-50-ies of the Arbat was a state highway, for which Stalin was driving to the Kremlin. Kalinin Prospekt (Novy Arbat) pulled of the vehicle itself, there is moved and processions of dignitaries. A project in the transformation of the Arbat pedestrian street was approved in 1974. For this purpose, in particular, a trolley bus route №39 (he devoted Okudzhava song "The last trolley") has been changed. In 1986, after years of reconstruction Arbat acquired familiar views

On the Vakhtangov theater related an interesting story that happened in the late 30s. Actors were invited to participate in the Kremlin gala concert. The car was sent to the actors sat Ruben Simonov in Stalin's image and Boris Shchukin in Lenin's image. The driver, afraid of being late, speeding, for which he was stopped right at the entrances to the Kremlin. What was the policeman's horror when he saw near the driver "Stalin", and in the back seat - "Lenin"!