Krasnaya Presnya

History

Present-day Krasnaya Presnya street is a part of a historical road connecting Moscow with Novgorod via Volokolamsk since the twelfth century. In the 17th century, lands south of the road were managed by Patriarch Joachim's court, lands north from it belonged to Voskresenskoye settlement, laid down by Tsar Feodor III. This royal village housed a private zoo, a distant predecessor of current Moscow Zoo. In 1729, Voskresenskoe became property of Vakhtang VI, a deposed Georgian king in exile. The memories of Vakhtang and his court remain in the names of Gruzinskaya (Georgian) streets; however, the Georgian community there dispersed within nineteenth century. By 1787, there were four ponds on the Presnya, with a wooden bridge, two dams and a water mill; in 1805, a stone bridge was built. Entertainment relocated east, closer to Presnya River, and the Kremlin Administrator, Valuev, made a short-lived miracle of converting the dirty banks of the Presnya into an upper-class promenade. Entertainment continued with the private Studenetz Park and the public Moscow Zoo (1864). But the district itself became an industrial, densely populated working-class area.