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Moscow Travel Guide

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Why travel to Moscow

Contrasts: 12th century monasteries and some of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe can be found side-by-side in this complex and captivating city. The diversity of this mega-city is astounding. Only a few steps away from the solemn red facade of the Kremlin and the sounds of righteous church bells, a buzzing night scene and alternative-fashion boutiques can be found.

Culture: In Moscow only the best goes. Be it a theatre, restaurant or gallery, the standards are certain to be world-class. The Bolshoi ballet company is reputed to be even better than the Mariinsky’s and “MMOMA” (Moscow’s museum of modern art) exhibits works of art as profound as any that could be found in the famed MOMA.

Convenience: Unlike the rest of Russia, it’s easy enough to get by with just English in Moscow and, driving excepted, it is surprisingly safe: the murder rate is lower than in some of America’s major cities.

Top Sights in Moscow

St. Basil’s

Novodevichy Convent

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Why visit Moscow

It would take more than two days to walk around the perimeter of the biggest city in Europe, Moscow. Many of its inhabitants barely know what’s beyond the few blocks around their flat and there are so many attractions that it’s almost impossible to know where to start. If there is such a thing as an antidote to boredom, Moscow City is it. The mind-boggling range and diversity of things to do, places to eat, parks, historical monuments and more means that a vacation in Moscow has a wealth of activities to offer for every type of traveler, from young families to retirees.

Reasons to Vacation in Moscow in 2022

The Bolshoi theatre is familiar to almost everyone as Russia’s grandest theatre, but what people don’t know is that there are many more bolshoi (big) sites in Moscow that are worth travelling all the way to Moscow to see. For more than 100 years, the world’s biggest bell has been hidden behind the Kremlin’s walls and inside Moscow’s main park (which is bigger than some countries!) there is the world’s largest outdoor ice-rink. Travelers that visit Moscow can stay at the Izmailovo, Europe’s biggest hotel, then eat at the largest and most historic McDonald’s in Europe and after that have fun at the largest European indoor theme park!

Ancient Past & Stunning Architecture:

As those who travel to Moscow will see, just because Moscow is a city of record-breaking, glitzy high-rises doesn’t mean that there is no history. On the famous Arbat street, time-worn, wooden storehouses and century-old churches are squashed up against grey, soviet blocks which are then towered over by 21st century office-blocks. Unlike its much younger sibling, St Petersburg, Moscow’s roots stretch way back to the 12th century. Within the walls of the Kremlin, the city’s oldest building the Cathedral of Assumption can be admired in all its 500+ years of age.

Culture & Convenience

For a foreigner who has never visited Russia, Moscow is the perfect stepping stone into this great land of mystery. From the country’s best classical ballet troupes to snow-white troikas trotting through the parks, all the highlights of Russian culture can be had in Moscow without any of the complications that would be expected in other, less developed regions of Russia.

Cheap as Caviar

In Moscow, everything is bargain when with the current foreign exchange rates being what they are. Even caviar doesn’t seem so dear when the exchange rate is at 60rub to the dollar, so go on indulge yourself! Take your 2022 vacation in Moscow and have the best of both worlds, with European luxury at very affordable prices.

Lena, our guide in Moscow was excellent. She was very knowledgable and could answer any question we had for her. We liked that she could pick up on our interests and take us places we might not have thought of to go. When we realized that one of the places we had chosen to see would probably not be that interesting to us, she was able to arrange entry to the Diamond Fund and the Armoury for us. Riding the Metro with Lena was a real adventure and a lot of fun. In Saint Petersburg we found Anna well versed in the history of the Tsars and in the Hermitage collection. Arkady in Veliky Novgorod was a very good guide and answered all of our questions with ease. Novgorod was perhaps a long way to go for a day trip, but we did enjoy it. Vasily was a great driver to have and kept us safe with good humour and skill. We enjoyed ourselves so much, my daughter says she is already planning to return. We would both have no hesistation to recommend ExpresstoRussia to anyone we know.

Just wanted to let you know that My grandson Bruno and I couldn´t have been more pleased with our week in Moscow (6/15 - 6/21). We were absolutely enchanted with the whole experience, including getting lost a couple of times in the Metro during our free time. Although both our guides (both Eleanas) were excellent, I would particularly commend the first one (she took us to the Tatiakov, the KGB tour, and to that beautiful cemetery where so many great Russian artists, authors, composers, musicians, militarists, and politicians are buried). Her knowledge is encyclopedic; and her understanding of today´s Russia as a product of its past was, for us, truly enlightening. I will be taking another tour in Russia, with my wife, within the next two or three years. I will be in touch with you when the time comes. Meanwhile, I will refer you to other potential visitors to Russia as I meet them.

We had a great time both in Moscow and St Petersburg. Your travel agency was excellent in coordinating the whole trip. Everything worked like clockwork. The guides assigned to us were very nice and friendly. They had a great knowledge of their subjects. The cars and the drivers were great. The hotels were good and the itinerary was good. All in all, it was a wonderful experience. It was nice dealing with you and your company. Thank you very much for a great Russian experience. Have a great future ahead

• 31 reviews of Express to Russia Moscow Tours in Moscow

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Science News by AGU

Ham Radios Crowdsourced Ionospheric Science During Eclipse

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This article also may be read in  Portuguese .

On 14 October, millions of people in North, Central, and South America peered through safety glasses and other viewing aids at the partially obscured Sun. Simultaneously, thousands of folks experienced the annular solar eclipse in a different way: through transmissions sent and received over amateur radios.

Before, during, and after the eclipse, ham radio operators pinged signals off the ionosphere and connected to people hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. The experiment, part of NSF and NASA’s Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI), is gathering hundreds of thousands of those contacts to investigate how the ionosphere responds to the temporary loss of sunlight during an eclipse.

“This is our way of remote sensing the ionosphere.”

“This is our way of remote sensing the ionosphere,” said Nathaniel Frissell (call sign W2NAF), a space physicist and electrical engineer at the University of Scranton (W3USR) in Pennsylvania and the lead HamSCI organizer. “People have been doing this for about 100 years, and it’s gamified,” he said. “We used this idea to create a ham radio contest that would actually be a scientific experiment.”

Bending Through the Air

Earth’s ionosphere, 80–600 kilometers above the ground, is a natural conduit for radio communication and navigation. Its charged particles bend the path of radio waves into an arc, enabling them to travel around the curvature of the planet from transmitter to receiver.

The ionosphere is densest during the day as high-energy sunlight ionizes molecules in the atmosphere, and it splits into four distinct sublayers segregated by density and ionization fraction, Frissell explained. A dense ionosphere helps radio transmissions travel longer distances and makes communications clearer.

At night, electrons recombine with positive ions to form neutral molecules, Frissell continued, lowering the percentage of ionized molecules and reducing the number of sublayers to just two. The lower density and fewer sublayers mean that some radio frequencies will be weakened as they travel, some will shift to higher or lower frequencies (Doppler shifting), and others might pass through the ionosphere entirely.

Depending on their frequency, radio waves will refract off the different sublayers, which are at different altitudes, affecting a signal’s range. That dependence makes shortwave, or high-frequency, radio communication networks an excellent tool to probe ionosphere fluctuations.

“An eclipse is like temporary nighttime,” Frissell said, allowing scientists to test whether the temporary darkness has the same effect on the ionosphere and radio communications as nighttime.

HamSCI was developed by ham radio operators who are also space physicists, atmospheric scientists, and communication engineers. The organizers use amateur radio to better understand ionospheric physics and its response to space weather , investigate how ionospheric disturbances affect ham radio communications, and grow awareness of and participation in the hobby’s global community.

Gamifying an Eclipse

Ham radio operators have participated in contests practically since the advent of the hobby 100 years ago, said Kristina Collins (KD8OXT), a HamSCI advisory board member and an electrical engineer at the Space Science Institute in Cleveland. During contests, hams, as operators are nicknamed , compete to make as many contacts, or QSOs , as they can within the contest’s guidelines. Operators submit their communications logs to the contest organizers, and contacts that meet parameters earn points.

“As my friend KJ4HNN likes to say, ‘You talk to as many people as possible as quickly as possible about as little as possible, and you see who can get the highest points,’” Collins quipped.

HamSCI held its first Solar Eclipse QSO Party (SEQP) during the 2017 Great American Eclipse . Before, during, and after the eclipse, HamSCI gathered 570 logs that contained nearly 30,000 contacts at 1.8-, 3.5-, 7-, and 14-megahertz frequencies. Nearly 5,000 unique call signs around the world participated. Those data helped the team understand how the total eclipse weakened the ionosphere and hindered radio communication.

The group wanted to repeat the success of 2017 during the 2023 annular solar eclipse that crossed the Americas. They set up another SEQP , put out the call, and invited any and all hams to participate. Given the eclipse’s path, the HamSCI team was especially interested in getting participation from hams operating outside of North America.

“Brazil is located near the magnetic equator,” said Edson Pereira (PY2SDR). There, plasma bubbles in the ionosphere create a lot of distortion in the radio signals, including shortwave, he explained. Pereira is a computer systems engineer and board member of Liga de Amadores Brasileiros de Rádio Emissão ( LABRE ), Brazil’s national amateur radio association.

Monitoring shortwave radio communications across the eclipse path in South America could help scientists better understand how plasma bubbles form and influence the surrounding atmosphere and improve satellite communication near the magnetic equator.

Results from 2023

According to Frissell, no one had yet used amateur radio data to study the ionospheric response to an annular eclipse. The HamSCI participants didn’t know what, if any, ionospheric response they would be able to see. At the top of their list of science questions: “ Can the annular eclipse be observed in high-frequency communications?” Frissell asked.

The answer came quickly and was a resounding yes! As the eclipse began to locally collapse sublayers of the ionosphere, the distance a wave had to travel to reach the ionosphere changed. This Doppler shifted the frequency before it arrived at a receiver, and that Doppler shift appeared very clearly in preliminary data.

Answering other science questions—about the size and duration of the ionospheric disturbance, how different ionosphere layers responded, and whether eclipse communications resemble those taken at dawn and dusk—will have to wait until contest participants submit their communication logs.

“When my station was transmitting, we would easily get 500 reception reports globally in a 15-minute period.”

The participation statistics look promising, the team said. One count during the contest showed 8,300 active receivers around the world, picking up more than 3,000 reports per second. “When my station was transmitting, we would easily get 500 reception reports globally in a 15-minute period,” Frissell said.

Logs from the SEQP are self-reported; a few days after the eclipse, 139 logs had been submitted, each containing potentially hundreds of contacts. “There are likely more coming,” Frissell said. “I haven’t submitted my SEQP log yet!”

Repeating the Experiment

The 2023 SEQP was one of several events that HamSCI plans to hold as part of its Festivals of Eclipse Ionospheric Science . “An eclipse is the closest thing you can get to a controlled experiment in space,” Collins said. “That’s the appeal.”

Experiments, after all, should be repeatable. There is an SEQP contest for the April 2024 total solar eclipse , and HamSCI will be looking to see whether the ionosphere responds the same way (near solar maximum ) as it did in 2017 (near solar minimum), Frissell said.

Each contest also provides opportunities for the team to engage with students and increase interest in amateur radio. Many ham radio operators got involved with the hobby when they were young, and for some it drove them to pursue a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education . “It gives a really solid STEM canon that has been boiled down into very straightforward training,” Collins said.

—Kimberly M. S. Cartier ( @AstroKimCartier ), Staff Writer

This news article is included in our ENGAGE resource for educators seeking science news for their classroom lessons. Browse all ENGAGE articles , and share with your fellow educators how you integrated the article into an activity in the comments section below.

Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2023), Ham radios crowdsourced ionospheric science during eclipse,  Eos, 104, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023EO230407 . Published on 26 October 2023.

Text © 2023. agu.  cc by-nc-nd 3.0 except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited., features from agu publications, lakes worldwide need a checkup, hydraulic fractures are lazy, foundations in hazards and disasters for undergraduate students.

Moscow Tours & Travel Packages 2024/2025

Our 60 most popular moscow trips. compare tour itineraries from 45 tour companies. 308 reviews. 4.7/5 avg rating., popular moscow tours.

St Petersburg & Moscow in Style - Winter

• Explore the majestic St Petersburg & Moscow on private city tours
• Admire the rich Russian history, art and architecture
• Travel to Moscow on a highspeed train
• Enjoy the local cuisine in stylish restaurants

Lower Volga Voyage

• Visit magnificent Red Square and Kremlin and examine the collection at theKremlin’s State Armory.
• Experience Russia’s diverse musical traditions at lively folk music performances
• Explore Volgograd, the site of the decisive battle of World War II’s eastern front

Volga Dream Russian River Cruise

St Petersburg & Moscow in Style - Summer

White Russian - 7 days

• Discover Moscow's UNESCO-listed Red Square, home to spectacular St Basil’s Cathedral, Lenin's Mausoleum and the historic GUM Department store
• Explore the grounds of Moscow's mighty Kremlin, with its numerous governmentbuildings, gold-domed cathedrals and the giant tsar bell
• Celebrate New Year's Eve in Moscow!
• Take in the highlights of St Petersburg including a guided tour of the exquisite Church on Spilled Blood, Peter & Paul Fortress and Cathedral
• Take a guided tour of the remarkable Hermitage Museum at the Winter Palace

Vodka Shot - 6 days

• Explore the beautiful city of St Petersburg, including the exquisite Church on Spilled Blood, Peter & Paul Fortress and Nevsky Prospekt
• Marvel at the dazzling array of art and exhibits in the world-famous Hermitage Museum, at the Winter Palace in St Petersburg
• Discover a lavish residence of the tsars on a day trip to Catherine Palace at Tsarkoe Selo (winter: mid-October to April) or Peterhof Palace and gardens (summer: May to mid-October)
• Take in the highlights of the capital on a walking tour, visiting Moscow's famous Red Square, home to the historic GUM Department Store, Lenin’s Mausoleum and spectacular St Basil’s Cathedral
• Take a guided tour of the Moscow Kremlin, Russia’s political power house. Stroll around the grounds of this fortified complex, visit the Kremlin's cathedrals and see the mighty Tsar Bell

Route of the Romanovs - 10 days

• Learn about the last days of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg, visiting the sites where Tsar Nicolas II and his family were assassinated and buried
• Straddle two continents at the famous obelisk Europe/Asia border marker in Yekaterinburg
• Experience the Trans-Siberian railway on an overnight train journey from Moscow to Yekaterinburg

New Year's in Moscow - 9 days

• Visit Catherine Palace at Tsarkoe Selo on Christmas Day and marvel at the incredible Amber Room
• Spend a night in Novgorod, an ancient city by the Volkhov River - explore the kremlin, cathedral and other sights and enjoy a traditional Russian banya (sauna)

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Small Group Moscow Tours

Back in the USSR - 7 days

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• Visit historic Novgorod, an ancient city which straddles the Volkhov River. Explore the attractive riverside kremlin and experience a traditional Russian banya (sauna)

The Snowball - 6 days

• Visit Catherine Palace at Tsarkoe Selo and marvel at the incredible Amber Room

Mood for Moscow - 4 days

• Head underground to visit a Stalinist-era Soviet Bunker on an optional excursion
• Stroll to the vibrant Izmailovo Market, which lies behind the walls of an ancient Kremlin, and shop for an array of souvenirs

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some hotels could have been better

It was jam packed with every place I wanted to go and see. I especially love my photo of us setting out on the night time river cruise in St Petersburg and the Peter...

I really did not buy much and what I did buy was small gifts for others .

Johanna-Marie

Good hotels, some better than others. Interesting itinerary

Too rushed. Optional tour rather too short

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In Transit: Notes from the Underground

Jun 06 2018.

Spend some time in one of Moscow’s finest museums.

Subterranean commuting might not be anyone’s idea of a good time, but even in a city packing the war-games treasures and priceless bejeweled eggs of the Kremlin Armoury and the colossal Soviet pavilions of the VDNKh , the Metro holds up as one of Moscow’s finest museums. Just avoid rush hour.

The Metro is stunning and provides an unrivaled insight into the city’s psyche, past and present, but it also happens to be the best way to get around. Moscow has Uber, and the Russian version called Yandex Taxi , but also some nasty traffic. Metro trains come around every 90 seconds or so, at a more than 99 percent on-time rate. It’s also reasonably priced, with a single ride at 55 cents (and cheaper in bulk). From history to tickets to rules — official and not — here’s what you need to know to get started.

A Brief Introduction Buying Tickets Know Before You Go (Down) Rules An Easy Tour

A Brief Introduction

Moscow’s Metro was a long time coming. Plans for rapid transit to relieve the city’s beleaguered tram system date back to the Imperial era, but a couple of wars and a revolution held up its development. Stalin revived it as part of his grand plan to modernize the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s. The first lines and tunnels were constructed with help from engineers from the London Underground, although Stalin’s secret police decided that they had learned too much about Moscow’s layout and had them arrested on espionage charges and deported.

The beauty of its stations (if not its trains) is well-documented, and certainly no accident. In its illustrious first phases and particularly after the Second World War, the greatest architects of Soviet era were recruited to create gleaming temples celebrating the Revolution, the USSR, and the war triumph. No two stations are exactly alike, and each of the classic showpieces has a theme. There are world-famous shrines to Futurist architecture, a celebration of electricity, tributes to individuals and regions of the former Soviet Union. Each marble slab, mosaic tile, or light fixture was placed with intent, all in service to a station’s aesthetic; each element, f rom the smallest brass ear of corn to a large blood-spattered sword on a World War II mural, is an essential part of the whole.

The Metro is a monument to the Soviet propaganda project it was intended to be when it opened in 1935 with the slogan “Building a Palace for the People”. It brought the grand interiors of Imperial Russia to ordinary Muscovites, celebrated the Soviet Union’s past achievements while promising its citizens a bright Soviet future, and of course, it was a show-piece for the world to witness the might and sophistication of life in the Soviet Union.

It may be a museum, but it’s no relic. U p to nine million people use it daily, more than the London Underground and New York Subway combined. (Along with, at one time, about 20 stray dogs that learned to commute on the Metro.)

In its 80+ year history, the Metro has expanded in phases and fits and starts, in step with the fortunes of Moscow and Russia. Now, partly in preparation for the World Cup 2018, it’s also modernizing. New trains allow passengers to walk the entire length of the train without having to change carriages. The system is becoming more visitor-friendly. (There are helpful stickers on the floor marking out the best selfie spots .) But there’s a price to modernity: it’s phasing out one of its beloved institutions, the escalator attendants. Often they are middle-aged or elderly women—“ escalator grandmas ” in news accounts—who have held the post for decades, sitting in their tiny kiosks, scolding commuters for bad escalator etiquette or even bad posture, or telling jokes . They are slated to be replaced, when at all, by members of the escalator maintenance staff.

For all its achievements, the Metro lags behind Moscow’s above-ground growth, as Russia’s capital sprawls ever outwards, generating some of the world’s worst traffic jams . But since 2011, the Metro has been in the middle of an ambitious and long-overdue enlargement; 60 new stations are opening by 2020. If all goes to plan, the 2011-2020 period will have brought 125 miles of new tracks and over 100 new stations — a 40 percent increase — the fastest and largest expansion phase in any period in the Metro’s history.

Facts: 14 lines Opening hours: 5 a.m-1 a.m. Rush hour(s): 8-10 a.m, 4-8 p.m. Single ride: 55₽ (about 85 cents) Wi-Fi network-wide

Buying Tickets

• Ticket machines have a button to switch to English.
• You can buy specific numbers of rides: 1, 2, 5, 11, 20, or 60. Hold up fingers to show how many rides you want to buy.
• There is also a 90-minute ticket , which gets you 1 trip on the metro plus an unlimited number of transfers on other transport (bus, tram, etc) within 90 minutes.
• Or, you can buy day tickets with unlimited rides: one day (218₽/ US$4), three days (415₽/US$7) or seven days (830₽/US$15). Check the rates here to stay up-to-date.
• If you’re going to be using the Metro regularly over a few days, it’s worth getting a Troika card , a contactless, refillable card you can use on all public transport. Using the Metro is cheaper with one of these: a single ride is 36₽, not 55₽. Buy them and refill them in the Metro stations, and they’re valid for 5 years, so you can keep it for next time. Or, if you have a lot of cash left on it when you leave, you can get it refunded at the Metro Service Centers at Ulitsa 1905 Goda, 25 or at Staraya Basmannaya 20, Building 1.
• You can also buy silicone bracelets and keychains with built-in transport chips that you can use as a Troika card. (A Moscow Metro Fitbit!) So far, you can only get these at the Pushkinskaya metro station Live Helpdesk and souvenir shops in the Mayakovskaya and Trubnaya metro stations. The fare is the same as for the Troika card.
• You can also use Apple Pay and Samsung Pay.

Rules, spoken and unspoken

No smoking, no drinking, no filming, no littering. Photography is allowed, although it used to be banned.

Stand to the right on the escalator. Break this rule and you risk the wrath of the legendary escalator attendants. (No shenanigans on the escalators in general.)

Get out of the way. Find an empty corner to hide in when you get off a train and need to stare at your phone. Watch out getting out of the train in general; when your train doors open, people tend to appear from nowhere or from behind ornate marble columns, walking full-speed.

Always offer your seat to elderly ladies (what are you, a monster?).

An Easy Tour

This is no Metro Marathon ( 199 stations in 20 hours ). It’s an easy tour, taking in most—though not all—of the notable stations, the bulk of it going clockwise along the Circle line, with a couple of short detours. These stations are within minutes of one another, and the whole tour should take about 1-2 hours.

Start at Mayakovskaya Metro station , at the corner of Tverskaya and Garden Ring,  Triumfalnaya Square, Moskva, Russia, 125047.

1. Mayakovskaya.  Named for Russian Futurist Movement poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and an attempt to bring to life the future he imagined in his poems. (The Futurist Movement, natch, was all about a rejecting the past and celebrating all things speed, industry, modern machines, youth, modernity.) The result: an Art Deco masterpiece that won the National Grand Prix for architecture at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. It’s all smooth, rounded shine and light, and gentle arches supported by columns of dark pink marble and stainless aircraft steel. Each of its 34 ceiling niches has a mosaic. During World War II, the station was used as an air-raid shelter and, at one point, a bunker for Stalin. He gave a subdued but rousing speech here in Nov. 6, 1941 as the Nazis bombed the city above.

Take the 3/Green line one station to:

2. Belorusskaya. Opened in 1952, named after the connected Belarussky Rail Terminal, which runs trains between Moscow and Belarus. This is a light marble affair with a white, cake-like ceiling, lined with Belorussian patterns and 12 Florentine ceiling mosaics depicting life in Belarussia when it was built.

Transfer onto the 1/Brown line. Then, one stop (clockwise) t o:

3. Novoslobodskaya.  This station was designed around the stained-glass panels, which were made in Latvia, because Alexey Dushkin, the Soviet starchitect who dreamed it up (and also designed Mayakovskaya station) couldn’t find the glass and craft locally. The stained glass is the same used for Riga’s Cathedral, and the panels feature plants, flowers, members of the Soviet intelligentsia (musician, artist, architect) and geometric shapes.

Go two stops east on the 1/Circle line to:

4. Komsomolskaya. Named after the Komsomol, or the Young Communist League, this might just be peak Stalin Metro style. Underneath the hub for three regional railways, it was intended to be a grand gateway to Moscow and is today its busiest station. It has chandeliers; a yellow ceiling with Baroque embellishments; and in the main hall, a colossal red star overlaid on golden, shimmering tiles. Designer Alexey Shchusev designed it as an homage to the speech Stalin gave at Red Square on Nov. 7, 1941, in which he invoked Russia’s illustrious military leaders as a pep talk to Soviet soldiers through the first catastrophic year of the war.   The station’s eight large mosaics are of the leaders referenced in the speech, such as Alexander Nevsky, a 13th-century prince and military commander who bested German and Swedish invading armies.

One more stop clockwise to Kurskaya station,  and change onto the 3/Blue  line, and go one stop to:

5. Baumanskaya.   Opened in 1944. Named for the Bolshevik Revolutionary Nikolai Bauman , whose monument and namesake district are aboveground here. Though he seemed like a nasty piece of work (he apparently once publicly mocked a woman he had impregnated, who later hung herself), he became a Revolutionary martyr when he was killed in 1905 in a skirmish with a monarchist, who hit him on the head with part of a steel pipe. The station is in Art Deco style with atmospherically dim lighting, and a series of bronze sculptures of soldiers and homefront heroes during the War. At one end, there is a large mosaic portrait of Lenin.

Stay on that train direction one more east to:

6. Elektrozavodskaya. As you may have guessed from the name, this station is the Metro’s tribute to all thing electrical, built in 1944 and named after a nearby lightbulb factory. It has marble bas-relief sculptures of important figures in electrical engineering, and others illustrating the Soviet Union’s war-time struggles at home. The ceiling’s recurring rows of circular lamps give the station’s main tunnel a comforting glow, and a pleasing visual effect.

Double back two stops to Kurskaya station , and change back to the 1/Circle line. Sit tight for six stations to:

7. Kiyevskaya. This was the last station on the Circle line to be built, in 1954, completed under Nikita Khrushchev’ s guidance, as a tribute to his homeland, Ukraine. Its three large station halls feature images celebrating Ukraine’s contributions to the Soviet Union and Russo-Ukrainian unity, depicting musicians, textile-working, soldiers, farmers. (One hall has frescoes, one mosaics, and the third murals.) Shortly after it was completed, Khrushchev condemned the architectural excesses and unnecessary luxury of the Stalin era, which ushered in an epoch of more austere Metro stations. According to the legend at least, he timed the policy in part to ensure no Metro station built after could outshine Kiyevskaya.

Change to the 3/Blue line and go one stop west.

8. Park Pobedy. This is the deepest station on the Metro, with one of the world’s longest escalators, at 413 feet. If you stand still, the escalator ride to the surface takes about three minutes .) Opened in 2003 at Victory Park, the station celebrates two of Russia’s great military victories. Each end has a mural by Georgian artist Zurab Tsereteli, who also designed the “ Good Defeats Evil ” statue at the UN headquarters in New York. One mural depicts the Russian generals’ victory over the French in 1812 and the other, the German surrender of 1945. The latter is particularly striking; equal parts dramatic, triumphant, and gruesome. To the side, Red Army soldiers trample Nazi flags, and if you look closely there’s some blood spatter among the detail. Still, the biggest impressions here are the marble shine of the chessboard floor pattern and the pleasingly geometric effect if you view from one end to the other.

Keep going one more stop west to:

9. Slavyansky Bulvar.  One of the Metro’s youngest stations, it opened in 2008. With far higher ceilings than many other stations—which tend to have covered central tunnels on the platforms—it has an “open-air” feel (or as close to it as you can get, one hundred feet under). It’s an homage to French architect Hector Guimard, he of the Art Nouveau entrances for the Paris M é tro, and that’s precisely what this looks like: A Moscow homage to the Paris M é tro, with an additional forest theme. A Cyrillic twist on Guimard’s Metro-style lettering over the benches, furnished with t rees and branch motifs, including creeping vines as towering lamp-posts.

Stay on the 3/Blue line and double back four stations to:

10. Arbatskaya. Its first iteration, Arbatskaya-Smolenskaya station, was damaged by German bombs in 1941. It was rebuilt in 1953, and designed to double as a bomb shelter in the event of nuclear war, although unusually for stations built in the post-war phase, this one doesn’t have a war theme. It may also be one of the system’s most elegant: Baroque, but toned down a little, with red marble floors and white ceilings with gilded bronze c handeliers.

Jump back on the 3/Blue line  in the same direction and take it one more stop:

11. Ploshchad Revolyutsii (Revolution Square). Opened in 1938, and serving Red Square and the Kremlin . Its renowned central hall has marble columns flanked by 76 bronze statues of Soviet heroes: soldiers, students, farmers, athletes, writers, parents. Some of these statues’ appendages have a yellow sheen from decades of Moscow’s commuters rubbing them for good luck. Among the most popular for a superstitious walk-by rub: the snout of a frontier guard’s dog, a soldier’s gun (where the touch of millions of human hands have tapered the gun barrel into a fine, pointy blade), a baby’s foot, and a woman’s knee. (A brass rooster also sports the telltale gold sheen, though I am told that rubbing the rooster is thought to bring bad luck. )

Now take the escalator up, and get some fresh air.

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