Rozhdestvenskaya Street is the lower town's main historical street — a long sloping lane that runs along the base of the upper bluff, lined with 18th- and 19th-century merchant buildings in various states of restoration. The street connects the Stroganov Church at its western end to the area around the Old Fair grounds at the eastern end, and walking it gives a good sense of what the pre-revolutionary lower town looked like at the height of its commercial prosperity.
The buildings along the street include banks, trading houses, and the private homes of wealthy merchants who wanted to be near the Fair. Restoration has been ongoing for years and the street is slowly becoming more presentable, though some buildings remain in poor condition. The street is most atmospheric in the early morning before the traffic builds up.