Basmanny District

Central street, known as Maroseika and Pokrovka, was part of a royal route to country estates in Izmailovo and hosted court gardens and nobility; by 1638, 62 of 83 households belonged to upper classes (Sytin, p. 103).

Lazarev's Institute of Oriental Languages, founded in 1814, has been an official school for Russian diplomats since 1827; today, its neoclassical building houses the embassy of Armenia.

Southern end of central Basmanny District hides the infamous Khitrovka – former "bottom of Moscow" between present-day Pokrovsky Boulevard, Khokhlovsky Lane and Solyanka Street.

Khitrov market, set up in the 1820s, became a flophouse district in the 1860s and a gang land by the 1880s, concentrating thousands of former peasants who failed to adjust to city life.

In the 1930s, Basmanny lost landmarks like Red Gates and Assumption Church in Pokrovka, but overall city fabric remains unchanged, with an irregular maze of lanes and two-story historical buildings.

Most notable is 15, Staraya Basmannaya by Vasily Schaub with Fyodor Schechtel artwork and clear Vienna Secession features, built to order of Moscow's only Persian property developer (Naschokina, p. 432).

In Soviet period, most of this architecture survived, excluding the blocks near the Garden Ring, which now house Ivan Fomin's constructivist "Tank Engine Building" (Ministry of Railways).

Tsar Peter, who grew up in nearby sloboda behind Yauza River, was a frequent guest in this settlement and built a palace for Franz Lefort (which later passed to Alexander Menshikov).

The district quickly industrialized, especially after Emancipation reform of 1861. Notable additions in the Soviet period were the TsAGI buildings in Radio Street and the numerous expansions of Technical University.

Word of Turkic origin, from the verb meaning "to push" ( Bashkir: баҫырға,Tatar: басырга, basyrga): the bread was "printed" on it squeezed the coat of arms.