A city this size becomes yours through its corners, not its landmarks. These are the neighborhoods where MEE gathers — what they’re like, where we go, and what’s coming up in each.
The famous street — and the better ones behind it
Everyone walks the Old Arbat once; the neighborhood's real life is one street back. The lanes between Old and New Arbat hide wine bars, courtyard cafés, and one of the best late-night food stretches in the center.
Arbatskaya
The boulevard ring at its most liveable
Chistye Prudy is boulevard Moscow: a long green strip, a pond with swans in summer and skaters in winter, and streets on either side that mix embassies, theatres, and some of the city's most quietly excellent restaurants.
Chistye Prudy
Medieval lanes, late bars, the city's oldest streets
Kitay-Gorod is the oldest surviving quarter of the city — lanes that pre-date St. Petersburg entirely, now stacked with bars in cellars and courtyards that take three attempts to find. By day it's churches and office workers; after ten it becomes the closest thing Moscow has to a bar district.
Kitay-Gorod
Bulgakov's pond, Moscow's densest café culture
The Patriarch's Ponds area is where Moscow goes when it wants to feel like a small city: one quiet pond, a grid of low streets, and more good kitchens per block than anywhere else in town. It's the setting of the opening scene of The Master and Margarita, and it still has a knack for evenings that start as one drink and end well after midnight.
Mayakovskaya
Across the river — galleries, workshops, quiet streets
Literally 'beyond the Moskva', Zamoskvorechye kept its low merchant houses and slow rhythm while the rest of the center grew up around it. It holds the Tretyakov Gallery, a string of independent art spaces, and cafés that don't need to shout.
Tretyakovskaya