Running along the southern part of Kitaigorodsky Proezd is a reconstruction of part of the Kitai-Gorod Walls which once encircled the whole of Kitai-Gorod.  The original walls were built on the orders of Yelena Glinskaya, the mother and regent of Ivan the Terrible, between 1535 and 1538 to protect Moscow from Crimea Tatar raids.  The walls were 2,567km in length and although shorter than the walls of the Kremlin they were thicker.  By the 18th century the walls had lost their defensive value but were more or less maintained for their historic significant.  This however all changed after the Revolution and practically all the walls were demolished during Stalin's reconstruction of Moscow in the 1930s.  This section of the wall on Kitaigorodsky Proezd was reconstructed between 1968 and 1973.  However hidden away in the underpass of the nearby Kitai-Gorod metro are the original foundations of the Varvarskie Gates of the Kitai-Gorod Walls.

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