Located on the corner of Ulitsa Novoslobodskaya and Ulitsa Lesnaya is the infamous Butyrka Prison. A prison has been located here since the times of Catherine the Great, who had the architect Matvey Kazakov design a fortress for use as a prison. The rebel Yemelian Pugachev was incarcerated here before his execution and one of the prison's towers was later named in his honour. In the mid-19th century the prison became a central transit prison and prisoners set out from here for Siberia. During the February Revolution the prison's political prisoners were released by revolting workers; one of such prisoners was Feliks Dzerzhinsky. However the Bolsheviks, under Dzerzhinsky as head of the NKVD, went on to use the prison for their own political prisoners. During the great purges of 1937 and 1938 each cell held up to 170 people. Today the prison is used as a pre-trial detention centre. The prison does run a small museum, but visits need to be specially arranged.

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