Because of the many historic buildings, and due to the numerous artists who have lived and worked in the street, the Arbat has also become an important tourist attraction.

From this point the Arbat runs southwest, with a dozen side streets leading off, and ends at Smolenskaya Square (Смоленская площадь), which intersects with the Garden Ring.

This street changes its name several times within the city limits, ultimately crossing the MKAD ring road, and becoming the M1 highway to Smolensk, Minsk and Warsaw.

[1] The document describes a fire which started in the wooden Church of Nicholas on the Sand (Церковь Николы на Песках).

Possibly lending some weight to this view, an Arbat Street (Арбатская улица) exists in Kolomna, 100 km southeast of Moscow.

In Alexey Tolstoy's historical novel Ivan the Terrible we find the following interpretation of the atmosphere of the period, "News of the fearsome plans had spread throughout Moscow, and a deathly silence reigned.

The shops were closed, the streets empty, and only occasionally one heard the galloping horses of the messengers of the Tsar, who had come down to the Arbat, to his favourite palace."

[10] After the dissolution of the Oprichnina, and the death of Ivan the Terrible, the Arbat's significance as a trade route began to grow again.

Time and again the Arbat proved important to the defence of the Kremlin: From its Eastern end, the volunteer army of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky delivered a decisive blow to the troops of the Polish-Lithuanian Field Marshal Jan Karol Chodkiewicz.

[11] During the 16th and 17th centuries, the neighbourhood was graced with elegant churches, notably the one featured in Vasily Polenov's celebrated painting A Courtyard in Moscow (1879).

By the 19th century at the latest the growth of Moscow meant that the Arbat was now in the centre of the city rather than at its edge, and so it became an ever more desirable place to live.

The fire lit during the battle for Moscow in 1812 destroyed large parts of the predominantly wooden city, and also decimated the Arbat.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Arbat also moved away from being a purely aristocratic part of town, and became a popular place for artists to live.

This was mainly due to the fact that many of the poets, thinkers, musicians and actors who had shaped Russia's cultural life came from the middle and lower nobility, sometimes from impoverished noble families.

It was around the Arbat that Russia's intelligentsia began to develop, largely made up of young educated nobles who were not afraid to criticize society.

Furthermore, most of the Arbat's churches were demolished, including that of St Nicholas, regarded as one of the finest examples of the style of the Boris Godunov period.

In the early 1980s the Arbat, which had been a busy street in terms of traffic, was closed off and made into a pedestrian zone one of the first in the Soviet Union.

This happened at the same time as the construction of a new Ministry of Defence building on Arbatskaya Square, which required a great number of communications, pipes and wires to be laid beneath the Arbat.

Tsoi's Wall in one of the Arbat side streets (Krivoarbatskiy Pereulok) remains a curious monument to those turbulent years.

However, the overall appearance of the Arbat is dominated by street artists, souvenir stalls and shops, restaurants, cafés and bars.

It has several notable statues, including one to Princess Turandot in front of the Vakhtangov Theatre, and another to Soviet-era folk singer, bard and poet Bulat Okudzhava, who wrote several poignant songs about the Arbat.

Most of these restaurants are geared towards visitors to Moscow and are considered by many residents to be over-priced and of low quality compared to those in other parts of the city.