Moscowfive days on foot and by metro

Two great galleries, the Kremlin from the inside, a night at the Bolshoi — and no car at any point.

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Getting around

Russia · 5 days

Five days in one city, all of it on foot and by metro. Two things pull the trip together: the Kremlin with the squares around it, and the museums — Tretyakov and Pushkin.

Day by day

Day 1 · 5 placesLanding, the river park and a first evening walk
Sheremetyevo → city: Aeroexpress to Belorussky, 35 min
  • Sheremetyevo (SVO) · Шереметьево (SVO)
    Where you land. The Aeroexpress to Belorussky station leaves every 30 minutes and takes 35 — at rush hour a taxi takes twice as long.
  • Patriarch's Ponds · Патриаршие пруды
    One pond, a ring of benches and the quietest expensive quarter in Moscow. Bulgakov opens The Master and Margarita on this bench line.
  • Nikolskaya Street · Никольская улица
    The pedestrian street off the corner of Red Square, strung with lights all year. Cafes, souvenir shops and the crowd that comes out after work — this is where you go for dinner on the first night.
  • Zaryadye Park · Парк «Зарядье»
    A park built in 2017 on the site of a demolished hotel, laid out as four Russian landscapes at once — tundra, steppe, forest, wetland — right next to the Kremlin. Open around the clock and free.
  • Floating Bridge · Парящий мост
    A concrete arc that hangs 70 metres over the river and holds on to nothing at the far end. The best free view of the Kremlin towers, and it is at its best right after sunset.
Day 2 · 8 placesRed Square, the Kremlin inside, and ballet at night
all day around the Kremlin and Teatralnaya, on foot
  • ★ Red Square · Красная площадь
    The reason people come to Moscow. Six hundred metres of cobbles with the Kremlin wall on one side and the trade rows on the other. Come at dusk on the first evening: the lights go on and the square empties out.
  • ★ St Basil's Cathedral · Собор Василия Блаженного
    Nine churches on one foundation, built in the 1550s, with painted brick corridors so narrow two people barely pass. From outside it is the postcard; inside it is a maze, and almost nobody expects that.
  • GUM · ГУМ
    The 1893 trade rows: three glass-roofed arcades, iron bridges across them, fountain in the middle. You do not have to buy anything — walk the top gallery and get the ice cream they have sold here since the 1950s.
  • ★ Cathedral Square, Moscow Kremlin · Соборная площадь Московского Кремля
    Five white cathedrals around one small square — this is where tsars were crowned and buried. The Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell stand a hundred steps away, and the Ivan the Great bell tower closes the square.
  • Kutafya Tower · Кутафья башня
    The only outer tower of the Kremlin still standing, and the way in for everybody. Tickets and the security line are here, so this is the first point of the day, not a sight you pass.
  • ★ Bolshoi Theatre · Большой театр
    Ballet or opera on the historic stage — red velvet, six tiers, the chandelier. No language needed for a ballet, which is why we take this over a drama theatre. Curtain at 19:00, and it ends around 22:00.
Day 3 · 7 placesTwo great galleries and the river bank
Volkhonka → across the river → Zamoskvorechye, on foot
  • Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts · ГМИИ имени А. С. Пушкина
    European art from Egyptian mummies to Rembrandt, in a 1912 building with a glass roof over the main hall. Two hours is enough if you skip the plaster-cast rooms.
  • Cathedral of Christ the Saviour · Храм Христа Спасителя
    The tallest Orthodox church in the world, blown up by Stalin in 1931 and rebuilt from scratch in the 1990s. Free to walk in; shoulders covered, and women take a scarf.
  • Patriarshy Bridge · Патриарший мост
    A pedestrian bridge with the whole postcard on it at once: the Kremlin upstream, the red brick of the old Red October chocolate factory downstream. Fifteen minutes, no ticket.
  • Gorky Park · Парк Горького
    Moscow at rest: the river embankment, benches, people on skates and bikes. Free since 2011, when the fairground rides were pulled out and it turned into a normal city park.
  • Muzeon Park and Krymskaya Embankment · Музеон и Крымская набережная
    The open-air yard where the Soviet monuments taken down in 1991 were put instead of being destroyed — Dzerzhinsky, rows of Lenins — now standing between modern sculpture.
  • ★ Tretyakov Gallery · Государственная Третьяковская галерея
    The Russian collection: icons, Repin, Vasnetsov, Serov, Vrubel. On Thursday it stays open until 21:00, so an unhurried two and a half hours still fits after everything else.
Day 4 · 7 placesSoviet Moscow: metro palaces, space and VDNKh
ring line → VDNKh and the space museum → back to Tverskaya
  • Tverskaya Street · Тверская улица
    The main street of the city, rebuilt wide and grand in the 1930s. Come down it in the evening from Pushkin Square: bookshops, the Yeliseyev grocery hall, and it ends at the Kremlin.
  • Mayakovskaya metro station · Станция метро «Маяковская»
    A 1938 station of steel arches and 34 mosaics set into the ceiling domes — you have to look straight up to see them. It won the grand prize in New York the year it opened.
  • Armoury Chamber · Оружейная палата
    The treasury: crowns, thrones, coronation dresses, gold carriages and ten Faberge eggs. Entry is by timed session, we take the 12:00 one, and the ticket is separate from the Kremlin grounds.
  • Worker and Kolkhoz Woman · «Рабочий и колхозница»
    Twenty-five metres of stainless steel made for the Paris expo of 1937 and brought back home. Standing under it is the point — photographs flatten it completely.
  • VDNKh · ВДНХ
    A 1939 exhibition city of pavilions, each built for one Soviet republic or industry, with the golden Friendship of Nations fountain in the middle. The grounds are free; walk the central alley to the Cosmos pavilion.
  • Museum of Cosmonautics · Музей космонавтики
    Sputnik, the dogs Belka and Strelka, Gagarin capsules, a full Mir module you walk through. It sits under the 107-metre titanium rocket monument, so both are one stop.
Day 5 · 2 placesArbat, Novodevichy and the flight home
city → Sheremetyevo: Aeroexpress from Belorussky, 35 min
  • Old Arbat · Старый Арбат
    The oldest pedestrian street in the city and the place for souvenirs — matryoshkas, prints, street painters. Come at opening time: by afternoon it is shoulder to shoulder.
  • Sheremetyevo (SVO) · Шереметьево (SVO)
    Departure airport for the flight home. Leave for the airport 2 hours before the flight, 3 for a long-haul one.
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