Big city lights: places to walk at night in Moscow
Locations and attractions that are wonderful at night
We tell you about some safe and very beautiful places in Moscow to visit at night: where to see the sunset, greet the dawn, get a fresh view of famous architectural monuments, and reach for the stars.
During the day, many of the most popular sights in Moscow are too crowded, but with the fall of twilight, there are far fewer tourists, and the famous historical buildings are illuminated and take on an additional charm.
One special decoration of the park is its architectural and artistic illumination. The sun sets, and all the main objects in Zaryadye — the Floating Bridge, the Ice Cave, the Media Center, the restaurant and cafe, the ponds, and the famous concert hall with its “Glass Bark” — look very different thanks to the lights of white, blue, and purple. In the evening, the landscape and trees are illuminated in white (due to this, the park’s plants can be seen even in the dark), and the artificial ponds are lit up in blue, green, and red. In winter, luminous New Year’s decorations are used in addition to the ordinary decoration.
After that, you can go down to the Kremlin Embankment, from which you can see the southern wall of the Kremlin with its numerous towers, Red Square, and Vasilyevsky Spusk — a picture-postcard view. The embankment is especially beautiful at night: numerous lights are reflected in water, and this creates a unique image of the capital which never sleeps.
The night illumination highlights the splendor of the most cinematic Stalinist skyscraper (the building is well-known to anyone who has ever watched the film Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears). In addition to the classic white color of the lights, which varies from warm to cool, the colors of the building’s facade are also used in the lighting. Thus, the towers of the building are illuminated with shades of green, and the spire changes color at night, from deep blue, like the night sky, to pink-peach, like the dawn.
If there is a district of the city that never sleeps, it is definitely Moscow-City. At night, there is no daytime hustle and bustle and no hurrying office workers, but there are stunningly illuminated skyscrapers. When you get tired of admiring, go inside — on the 53rd floor of Imperia Tower, there is a hookah bar that is open until six in the morning, where you can relax after a night walk, warm up, and drink tea or something stronger.
After walking near the skyscrapers, we advise you to take a walk along the shining Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment to the Trekhgornaya manufactory: the area of the cluster has its own 24-hour-a-day lifestyle. You can sit in the yard and admire the industrial architecture, or you can visit one of the establishments: the restaurant Bochka, the gastrobar Nikuda Ne Yedem, and a whole quarter of establishments serving cuisines from around the world, united under the Zavarka sign, are open until morning.
This and five other pedestrian streets in the center of Moscow — Nikolskaya, Bolshaya Dmitrovka, Kuznetsky Most, and Stoleshnikov Lane — attract tourists and residents at any time of day. At night, Starry Sky is turned on: large-scale light installations to which additional decorations are added to match the season. For example, there light spheres similar to huge Christmas bulbs in winter, and there are balls with leaves in autumn. Nikolskaya Street, has the largest LED garland: if it were stretched out, it would form a luminous thread 92 kilometers long. Starry Sky is so low above the sidewalks that it almost seems that you could touch the stars with your hand: fans of unusual photography take advantage of this idea in every possible way. Golden garlands with multi-colored sparkling balls hang above Kuznetsky Most Street, luminous jellyfish hover over Bolshaya Dmitrovka, and at nightfall, shimmering garlands with multi-colored decorations descend from the sky in Kamergersky Lane.
Another area of Moscow where it is great to walk at night is Kitay-Gorod. It is popular, but not as full of tourists as Nikolskaya Street or Kuznetsky Most Street. You can get acquainted with the ancient history of the capital (the architectural monuments and ancient churches look different than they do in the day), or you can meet new people. Some of the clubs and bars in the area are open until the last guest leaves. On weekends, a new place of power in the city, the Yauza Place space, will definitely be open until morning. Young people have enjoyed gathering at Yama for several summers already. It is a very cheerful square at the end of Pokrovsky Boulevard with an exposed section of the wall of the White City and an amphitheater around it.
The entrance of the Exhibition looks different at dusk: it is illuminated with bright lights, which you won’t see during the day. However, on summer nights, it is best to visit to admire the fountains: the colorful illumination of the main fountain, Friendship of Peoples, changes several times each hour. Then, you can go and see the more than twenty other water objects, each of which has its own lighting design. It is said that you could spend a whole night walking around in contemplation.
You can watch the sunset and greet the dawn from the Sparrow Hills observation platform: it offers a stunning view of sparkling Moscow. You can see Luzhniki Stadium and the Ostankino TV Tower, pick out the Stalinist skyscrapers and the spire of the Hotel Ukraine, or simply meditate on the pulsing lights of the capital.
Cover photo: mos.ru
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