The cunning market, or Khitrovka, in all forms of its existence, was separated from other parts of the city by a hot island, where fugitive Siberian convicts were hiding, gathered in overnight shelters on conspiracy gatherings, bandits flashed in a string of long and black corridors tweezers, clutching a stolen ring or watch on a chain in their fist.

Gilyarovsky, studying Moscow life from the inside, in his book “Moscow and Muscovites”, allocated a special place to this market, communicating with its inhabitants every day, and K. Stanislavsky, V. Nemirovich—Danchenko and artist K. Somov, while preparing for the performance at the Moscow Art Theater, the play “At the Bottom” came to a dark restaurant located on the market, quietly sat down in the corner and collected material.

Among the long and winding corridors, dark overnight shelters and police raids, every day and night, a drama was played out on Khitrovskaya Square from the lives of tramps and ordinary people with a criminal past and present. Only “experienced” and brave people dared to sit in local taverns and walk around the market without the constant thought that in a couple of minutes you might miss a few coppers in your pocket.

Now Khitrovskaya Square is an unremarkable place. Of the surviving sights of that time, only the “iron house” remained, the famous front house, which faces the square at its narrow end, and once a gloomy overnight shelter for the inhabitants of Khitrovka. Previously, it was closely adjacent to a long house called the “Dry Ravine”, and the inhabitants of these houses were called either “irons” or “wolves of the Dry Ravine”.