• Moscow
• St PetersburgMOSCOW
MOSCOW is all things to all people. For Westerners, the city may
look European, but its unruly spirit seems closer to Central Asia. To
Muscovites, however, Moscow is both a "Mother City" and a "big village",
a tumultuous community which possesses an underlying collective instinct
that shows itself in times of trouble. Home of one in fifteen Russians,
it is huge, surreal and apocalyptic. Its beauty and ugliness are
inseparable, its sentimentality the obverse of a brutality rooted in
centuries of despotism, while private and cultural life in the city are
as passionate as business and politics are cynical.
Moscow has been imbued with a sense of its own destiny since the
fourteenth century, when the principality of Muscovy took the lead in
the struggle against the Mongol-Tatars who had reduced the Kievan state
to ruins. Under Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible - the "Gatherers of
the Russian Lands" - its realm came to encompass everything from the
White Sea to the Caspian, while after the fall of Constantinople to the
Turks, Moscow assumed Byzantium's suzerainty over the Orthodox world.
Despite the changes wrought by Peter the Great - not least the transfer
of the capital to St Petersburg - Moscow kept its mystique and bided its
time until the Bolsheviks made it the fountainhead of a new creed.
Since the fall of Communism, Muscovites have given themselves over
largely to the "Wild Capitalism" that intoxicates the city, as Mayor
Luzhkov puts into effect major building programmes which are changing
the face of the city more radically than at any time since the Stalin
era. The construction boom seemed to reach its height with the
celebrations of the city's 850th anniversary in 1997, but intensive
building activity continues throughout the centre
The City
Discounting a couple of satellite towns beyond the outer ring road,
Moscow covers an area of about 900 square kilometres. Yet, despite its
size and the inhuman scale of many of its buildings and avenues, the
general layout is easily grasped - a series of concentric circles and
radial lines, emanating from the Kremlin - and the centre is compact
enough to explore on foot.
Red Square and the Kremlin are the historic nucleus of the city, a
magnificent stage for political drama, signifying a great sweep of
history that encompasses Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Stalin and
Gorbachev. Here you'll find Lenin's Mausoleum and St Basil's Cathedral,
the famous GUM department store, and the Kremlin itself, whose splendid
cathedrals and Armoury museum head the list of attractions. The Kremlin
is ringed by two quarters defined by boulevards built over the original
ramparts of medieval times, when Moscow's residential areas were divided
into the inner Beliy Gorod and the humbler outer Zemlyanoy Gorod - both
quarters housing a number of museums and art galleries.
Beyond this historic core Moscow is too sprawling to explore on foot:
you'll need to rely on the metro. To the southwest of the Kremlin,
Krasnaya Presnya describes a swathe which includes the White House (the
Russian Parliament building); the Novodevichiy Convent further south
across the Moskva River; Victory Park, to the southwest; and Moscow
State University, in the Sparrow Hills. South across the river from the
Kremlin, Zamoskvoreche is home of the Tretyakov Gallery of Russian art
and Gorky Park, while further south are the Donskoy and Danilov
monasteries that once stood guard against the Tatars, as well as the
romantic ex-royal estate of Kolomenskoe . Fewer attractions are to be
found to the north and east of the centre, but you should venture out to
visit VDNKh , a huge Stalinist exhibition park with amazing statues and
pavilions, in the vicinity of Moscow's Botanical Gardens and TV Tower,
and to the Andrei Rublev Museum of Old Russian Art and Culture .
ST PETERSBURG
ST PETERSBURG , Petrograd, Leningrad and now again, St Petersburg -
the city's succession of names mirrors Russia's turbulent history.
Founded in 1703 as a "window on the West" by Peter the Great, St
Petersburg was for two centuries the capital of the tsarist empire,
synonymous with excess and magnificence. During World War I the city
renounced its German-sounding name and became Petrograd, and as such was
the cradle of the revolutions that overthrew tsarism and brought the
Bolsheviks to power in 1917. As Leningrad it epitomized the Soviet
Union's heroic sacrifices in the war, withstanding nine hundred days of
Nazi siege. Finally, in 1991 - the year that Communism and the USSR
collapsed - the change of name, back to St Petersburg, proved deeply
symbolic of the country's democratic mood.
St Petersburg's sense of its own identity owes much to its origins and
to the interweaving of myth and reality throughout its history. Created
by the will of an autocrat, the imperial capital embodied both Peter the
Great's rejection of Old Russia - represented by "Asiatic" Moscow, the
former capital - and of his embrace of Europe. The city's architecture,
administration and social life were all copied or imported.
Today, St Petersburg is beautiful yet drab, progressive yet stagnant,
sophisticated and cerebral, industrial and maritime. Beggars and
nouveaux riches rub shoulders on Nevskiy prospekt, yet after the
enormous changes of recent years a sense of stability and relative
wellbeing has at last arrived, reaching even beyond the historic centre
to the sprawling outer ring of high-rise blocks
The City
Everything in St Petersburg is built on a grand scale, which makes
mastering the public transport system a top priority. The city is split
by the River Neva and its tributaries, with further sections delineated
by the course of the canalized Moyka and Fontanka rivers, all of which
conveniently divide St Petersburg into a series of islands, making it
fairly easy to get your bearings.
St Petersburg's centre lies on the south bank of the River Neva , with
the curving River Fontanka marking its southern boundary. The area
within the Fontanka is riven by a series of wide avenues which fan out
from the most obvious landmark on the south bank of the Neva, the
Admiralty. Many of the city's greatest sights and monuments - the Winter
Palace and the art collections of the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the
Mikhail Castle, the Summer Garden, and the St Isaac and Kazan cathedrals
- are located in and around Nevskiy prospekt , the main avenue.
Across the River Neva, and connected by Dvortsoviy most (Palace Bridge),
is Vasilevskiy Island , the largest of the city's islands. In an area
known as the Strelka , located on the island's eastern tip, are some of
St Petersburg's oldest institutions: the Academy of Sciences, the
university and the former Stock Exchange, as well as some fascinating
museums.
On the north side of the River Neva, opposite the Winter Palace, is the
island known as the Petrograd Side, home to the Peter and Paul Fortress
, whose construction is seen as marking the foundation of the city
itself. As well as its strategic and military purpose, it also housed St
Petersburg's first prison and cathedral.
Back on the mainland, east of the River Fontanka, the conventional
sights are more dispersed and the distances that much greater. The two
most popular destinations in this wedge of land, which was largely
developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, are the Smolniy
Complex , from where the Bolsheviks orchestrated the October Revolution,
and, further south, the Alexander Nevsky Monastery .
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