Moskovskaya Street
In ancient times, when in the place of the present-day Sovetskaya Square there was a fortress, they established to the north of it, in front of the entrance tower, shopping streets, a town hall, a custom house, and a tavern. Merchants and artisans came to live nearby, they saw appeared a street Spasskaya running downslope and named after the cathedral located in the fortress.
As the market and artisanal centre of the city became wider, the street name changed to Bolshaya Posadskaya or Posatskaya Bazarnaya Street. It was not until the turn of the 18th and the 19th centuries that the main town street name attached the word Moskovskaya, being at first just an addition put to its previous names: Bolshaya Moskovskaya, Moskovskaya Posadskaya, Sredne-Bazarnaya Moskovskaya, and then, at last, as a separate toponym – Moskovskaya Street.
It was precisely this name that has been assigned to the street as it reflected its true location within the town planning of that time: the Moscow post road connecting Penza and Moscow started here passing through Saransk, Arzamas, Murom, and Vladimir.
