Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge

The Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge spans the Moskva River from Borovitskaya Square, named after the nearby Kremlin tower, to Bolshaya Polyanka on the island formed by the Drainage Canal. Today it offers one of Moscow's most recognizable views — a panorama of the Kremlin, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and the House on the Embankment.

A ford had existed on this spot since ancient times, crossed by the Volotskaya road from Ryazan to Novgorod, and later by a floating “live” bridge. The Strasbourg master Hans Christler began building the first permanent stone bridge in 1643 under a decree from Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich, but after the tsar's death the work was halted as too costly. Construction resumed only in the 1680s: by 1687, on the initiative of Tsarevna Sophia and her favorite Vasily Golitsyn, the elder Filaret completed the bridge, relying on a wooden model left by Christler. In 1692 the bridge was named Vsekhsvyatsky (All Saints), after the gate of Bely Gorod that stood opposite it.

The old bridge did not stand quite where the current one does — it was closer to today's House on the Embankment — and it stretched 170 meters long by 22 meters wide, with eight arches allowing boats and rafts to pass. Before the bridge rose the Six-Gate Tower, with six passageways and pyramidal tiers echoing the Kremlin's Borovitskaya Tower. The cost of construction so astonished contemporaries that it gave rise to the saying “Dearer than the Stone Bridge!”, which remained in use for a century and a half. The bridge was three times wider than the usual Moscow streets, so it was built up with shops and stalls — tobacco was traded there, taverns operated, and all manner of rough characters gathered beneath its arches: townsfolk nicknamed the span on the left bank the “ninth cell” and tried to avoid it after dark.

The floods of 1783 and 1786 seriously damaged the bridge — arches collapsed and people died — after which it was thoroughly repaired, with the shops and tower demolished. In the mid-1850s the deteriorated crossing was dismantled, its extremely solid masonry blown up, and in 1859 engineer Nikolai Voskoboinikov, following drawings by Colonel Tannenberg, erected a new crossing on the site — a three-span metal structure, the first of its kind in the city. According to contemporaries' recollections, it was near this bridge, in the autumn of 1877, that composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky attempted to take his own life.

The present bridge was built in 1938 slightly downstream, closer to the Kremlin: engineer Nikolai Kalmykov and architects Vladimir Shchuko, Vladimir Gelfreikh, and Mikhail Minkus created a strict arched structure 487 meters long with a 105-meter river span, decorated only with modest bas-reliefs of wheat sheaves and hammers. In 2020–2021 the bridge underwent a large-scale reconstruction, prompted by noticeable vibration of the structure under heavy vehicles during parade rehearsals; the work, which took fourteen months, effectively rebuilt the bridge from scratch while keeping vehicle and pedestrian traffic flowing throughout the repairs.