Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Garage, located in Gorky Park, is not just a museum. It also has a restaurant, a public library specializing in modern art and a fantastic bookshop.
Fans of modern art will appreciate Garage’s wide selection of photography books, modern art theory guides and children’s books, as well as such souvenirs as jewelry, posters, postcards and printed Garage merchandise.
9 Krymsky Val, Bldg. 45. Metro Oktyabrskaya. garagemca.org/en
Biblio-Globus
This is one of the largest bookstores in Moscow, and one of the most packed and chaotic. There isn’t a single chair to sit in, and you can barely pass through some aisles.
But it does have so many things going for it, namely nearly 20,000 foreign books covering a full range of subjects, a section selling English teas and other Anglophile goods and a truly impressive collection of paperbacks.
6/3 Myasnitskaya Ulitsa, Bldg. 1. Metro Lubyanka, Kuznetsky Most, Kitai-Gorod. Biblio-globus.ru
The House of Foreign Books
This regal store on Kuznetsky Most has been in operation since 1936. Now part of the enormous Moscow House of Books chain, it still maintains its charm with a genuine traditional, old-fashioned bookstore’s atmosphere.
The shop has over 20,000 books in foreign languages, although the majority are in English. The store has a particularly rich assortment of English-language textbooks, as well as coffee-table books on the arts, translations of Russian classics, a fairly up-to-date section on Russia past and present, cookbooks, how-to guides and travel guides for Russia.
There’s also the Western-style bookstore paraphernalia: bookmarks, cards and mugs.
18/7 Kuznetsky Most. Metro Kuznetsky Most.
Dom Knigi (House of Books)
The enormous Moscow House of Books on Novy Arbat has many English-language books and materials, with English books to be found in almost every department.
You’ll also find published-in-Russia guides for travel, food and other aspects of Russian life; foreign travel guides; translations of Russian literature; and classic and contemporary fiction, including regularly updated bestsellers. On the first floor is one of the city's best office supply departments, souvenirs, gifts, music CDs and DVDs.
8 Novy Arbat. Metro Arbatskaya. Mdk-arbat.ru
Khodasevich
Khodasevich, named after the poet Vladislav Khodasevich, is a fun, filled bookstore with a slightly scholarly bent and a lot of books in English: used, new, fiction, non-fiction. Friendly vibe and helpful staff.
6 Ulitsa Pokrovka. Metro Chistiye Prudy, Kitai-Gorod. xodacevich.org
Bookbridge
Bookbridge might be Moscow's biggest bookshop specializing in foreign books - mostly English but also Spanish, German, French, Swedish and Italian, as well as other languages. They carry textbooks, lots of albums, kiddie lit, fiction and non-fiction in paper, audio, and electronic formats. If you don't want to tramp around Zamoskvorechye -- although why anyone would not want to tramp around that relatively untouched area south of the river is a mystery -- you can order online.
7 Bolshaya Tatarskaya Ulitsa. Metro Novokuznetskaya. www.bookbridge.ru
Relod
Relod touts itself as the biggest store for studying foreign languages in Moscow, and they may be right. They have an abundance of textbooks and training programs and materials for primarily English but also French and Spanish. But if you've already mastered English, you'll be interested in their particularly large assortment of English-language fiction for adults and children and non-fiction covering every subject imaginable, but especially Russian and British culture and history, the social sciences, and the arts.
26 Posledny Pereulok, but entrance between houses 23 and 25 on Bolshoi Golovin Pereulok. Metro Sukharevskaya .www.relod.ru and internet purchases here.
