The Moskva is a river of western Russia. It rises about west of Moscow, and flows roughly east through the Smolensk and Moscow Oblasts, passing through central Moscow. About south east of Moscow, at the city ofKolomna, it flows into the Oka, itself a tributary of the Volga, which ultimately flows into the Caspian Sea.
Moskva and Moscow are two different renderings of the same Russian word Москва. The city is named after the river. Finno-Ugric Merya and Muroma people, who originally inhabited the area, called the river Mustajoki, in English: Black river. It has been suggested that the name of the city derives from this term, although several theories exist. To distinguish the river and the city, Russians usually call the river Moskva-reka instead of just Moskva.
Hydrology
The river is long, and the area of its drainage basin is. It has a vertical drop of . The maximum depth is above Moscow city limits, and up to below it. Normally, it freezes in November–December and begins to thaw around late March. In Moscow, the river freezes occasionally; during an unusually warm winter in 2006–2007, ice began melting on January 25. The absolutewater level in downtown Moscow is above sea level ; a historical maximum of above sea level was set by the 1908 flood.
Cities and towns
, the capital of Russia, is situated on its banks. The river also flows through the towns of Mozhaysk, Zvenigorod, Zhukovsky, Bronnitsy, Voskresensk, and — at the confluence of the Moskva and Oka — Kolomna. As of 2007, there are 49 bridges across the Moskva River and its canals within Moscow city limits; the first stone bridge, Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, was erected in 1692. Within the city, the river is wide, the narrowest point being under the Kremlin walls. Drinking water for the city of Moscow is collected from five stations on the Moskva River and from the Upper Volga reservoirs.
Islands
Canals, built within Moscow city limits, have created a number of islands. Some of them have names in Russian, some have none. Major, permanent islands are:
Serebryany Bor. Separated from the mainland in the 1930s.
Tatarskaya Poyma, commonly known as Mnyovniki. Separated from the mainland in the 1930s
Balchug Island, also known as Bolotny Ostrov, lying just opposite the Kremlin. The island was formed by the construction of the Vodootvodny Canal in the 1780s, and has no official name in Russian. Moscow residents informally call it "Bolotny Ostrov" while members of Moscow's English-speaking community refer to it as Balchug.
There is a fleet of river ice-breaker cruisers which ply routes from moorings at the Hotel Ukraine and Gorky Park to the Novospassky Monastery and back. Duration of trips ranges from 1.5 to 3 hours.
