Where to Stay in Khimki, Moscow Oblast

What is Khimki known for?

The Soviet aerospace industry gave Khimki its industrial standing, while the malls along the Moscow approaches draw people out from the capital for a day of nothing else. Two small museums answer for the rest, the Museum of money and the Museum of the History of Cognac, and the Moscow State University of Culture and Arts brings its own traffic. The Khimki War Memorial and the Ezhi monument carry the war years.

What are the main landmarks in Khimki?

The Moscow Canal is the largest feature the town owns, and the Himki rail bridge crosses it. Churches carry the older ground: the Church of Saint Peter and Paul, the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Kosmodemyanskoye, the Church of Saint Sergius of Radonezh in Businovo and the Church of Alexander Nevsky in Kurkino. War memory is dense here.

The Khimki War Memorial, the Ezhi monument and the monument to the heroes of undeclared wars stand apart from the Monument to Andrew the First-Called, and two small museums round it off.

What is the history of Khimki?

The ground was in use long before the town. The Alyoshkino archaeological complex records the earliest settlement, and the estates of Kosmodemyanskoye and Petrovskoye-Lobanovo were working landholdings when this was still country outside Moscow. Parish churches came with them.

The Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian, the Church of Saint Sergius of Radonezh in Businovo and the Church of Alexander Nevsky in Kurkino all date from that older order, and Kurkino also held a hospital settlement whose main building, kitchen and doctors' house survive. Khimki itself dates from 1851. The Moscow Canal was cut through and split the place into left and right banks, with Levoberezhny on one side and Pravoberezhnaya street on the other.

Aerospace made the modern town. The Soviet aerospace industry established itself here, and the war years left the Khimki War Memorial, the Ezhi monument and a later monument to the heroes of undeclared wars. Housing and retail followed the commuter demand from Moscow, the Moscow State University of Culture and Arts settled in, and the Museum of money and the Museum of the History of Cognac opened as small attractions of their own.

The Monument to Andrew the First-Called is more recent.

Where is Khimki?

Khimki covers about 110 square kilometres of Moscow Oblast, northwest of central Moscow and inside the Moscow metropolitan area. The Moscow Canal runs through it. That water separates Levoberezhny from the right bank around Pravoberezhnaya street, and the Himki rail bridge is one of the crossings that hold the two halves together.

Kurkino, Kosmodemyanskoye and Businovo sit at the edges of the built-up ground, and the Alyoshkino archaeological complex lies within the same boundary.

What is the climate of Khimki?

The Moscow Canal freezes over in the long cold half of the year, and the left bank at Levoberezhny takes the wind off it with nothing to break the run. Summer is short but usable. The malls carry the winter traffic, and the Museum of money and the Museum of the History of Cognac are the indoor fallbacks when the weather closes the walk to the Khimki War Memorial.

Snow holds the ground for months.

How do you get to Khimki?

Moscow is the obvious approach, since the town is part of the Moscow metropolitan area and sits a short run northwest of the centre. Rail crosses the Himki rail bridge. The Moscow Canal is the other line through, and vessels using it pass between the two banks rather than stopping at any centre the town could call its own.

Inside Khimki the ground is wide, so Kurkino, Kosmodemyanskoye and the malls on the right bank need local transport between them.