The Boulevard Ring (; transliteration: ''Bulvarnoye Koltso'') is

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

's second innermost

ring road A ring road (also known as circular road, beltline, beltway, circumferential (high)way, loop or orbital) is a road or a series of connected roads encircling a town, city or country. The most common purpose of a ring road is to assist in reducin ...

(the first is formed by the Central Squares of Moscow running along the former walls of Kitai-gorod).

Boulevard A boulevard is a type of broad avenue planted with rows of trees, or in parts of North America, any urban highway or wide road in a commercial district. In Europe, boulevards were originally circumferential roads following the line of former ...

s form a semicircular chain along the western, northern and eastern sides of the historical White City of Moscow; in the south the incomplete ring is terminated by the embankments of

Moskva River The Moskva (, ''Moskva-reka'') is a river that flows through western Russia. It rises about west of Moscow and flows roughly east through the Smolensk and Moscow Oblasts, passing through central Moscow. About southeast of Moscow, at the cit ...

. The first of the boulevards, Tverskoy Boulevard, emerged in 1796, but the ring was completely developed in 1820s, after the disastrous 1812 fire. The Ring replaced the medieval walls of the White City in the 1820s. The wall itself was razed in 1760, and despite the royal decrees to keep the site clear, the area was soon built over with private and state property. The Fire of Moscow destroyed many of those buildings, allowing the city planners to replace them with wide green boulevards. In the 20th century, the width of the Boulevard Ring was expanded, as the formerly paved areas along the Pokrovsky Boulevard and Strastnoy Boulevard were planted with trees. Plans to complete the ring through Zamoskvorechye never materialized, however. These plans to properly terminate the ring through Yakimanka and Zamoskvorechye districts, proposed in 1935, periodically resurface in city planners' discussions.

List of boulevards

See also