My People and Places Portfolio and Blog
The in-laws came over 2 weeks ago today for four days, but the volcanic ash cloud covering most of Europe meant they stayed for 10 days in the end, so we did a fair bit of looking around the city to the following places:-
The bars and restaurants have already been covered in the previous post but worth mentioning the unusually good service that went along with the great food at Torro Grill next to Belorusskaya Metro where we celebrated John’s birthday and Help Bar where we celebrated Caro’s birthday and her and Christy’s last night out in Moscow.
On the first morning after the night they arrived when we took them to Help bar, we took them around Red Square where unfortunately they were still working on repairing some of the surface of the square and cleaning up Lenin’s tomb and the Mausoleum on the Kremlin walls (in preparation for the Victory Day parade). They were, like most people a little over-whelmed by Red Square, until it began to rain, so we headed into St Basil’s cathedral, this was my third time inside and the combination of simplicity of the hallways, and intricate designs of most of the chapels.
The next day we had booked Anna (email me if you want her contact details), an amazingly knowledgeable tour guide we had used on our first trip to Moscow last year. We started out at the south side of Kitai Gorod, down Nikitnikov Pereulok to take a look at the Trinity Church in Nikitniki built in the Russian Baroque Style between 1631 and 1634. It is a beautiful church that was saved in the Soviet period and used as a museum, it does contrast dramatically with the concrete soviet building to the side and rear of the church which does make it stand out so much more, although many tourists don’t even go to see this church.
We walked from here down to Varvarka Ulitsa where there are some great buildings, some in need of further restoration though, Anna had some interesting things to say about the Orthodox Church in general when probed by inquisitive people. One thing is that there has been a recent law passed to pass all remaining Church property (buildings and decoration) back to the church over the next year or two, some might say this is long overdue but many of the remaining churches have already been passed back following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition to some lovely churches on this street are two old buildings of special note, the Palace of the Romanov Boyars and the English court. The former now housing a museum to the Noble family of Romanov that were eventually to become to Royal family of Russia (it was built by the Romanov’s in the early 16th Century), the latter being the site of the first centre of trade and diplomacy between Russia and England in the 16th Century, donated to English merchants in the 16th Century.
After a brief stop in Red Square once again we jumped into our waiting minivan to the cathedral of Christ the Saviour which is a modern reproduction of the original which was demolished with explosives in 1931 to make way for a palace topped with a 400m tall Statue of the Supreme Soviet, Lenin. This was never completed due to the outbreak of war, and following the years of war it was used as a year round heated open air swimming pool. The church was entirely destroyed, however one icon survives as a local person had broken into the church whilst the explosives were being set and hid the icon, passed down the generations of his family until it was eventually given back to the church. This Icon is now on display in a new area of the church under the main church (this is also where christening, weddings, etc are carried out) and there is a record of the destruction of the church and the beginning of the construction of its replacement.
Next we went to Novodevichy Cemetery, my Mother-in-law has a thing about visiting cemeteries when visiting new places so we concentrated on this rather than the convent to which it is attached. The great and good of Russia and the Soviet union are buried here including artists, poets, dancers, Soviet General and politicians, and more recently Boris Yeltsin who has a distinctive grave in the form or a billowing flag of the Russian Federation as befitting his place in History as its first president.
Sparrow Hills was the next stop, it is in front of the huge University Building overlooking Moscow, perched on top of ‘Sparrow Hills’ on the south side of the River Moskva facing the Olympic Stadium. On the Sparrow hills viewpoint you will usually see at least half a dozen wedding parties, some stalls selling the usual souvenirs, and many other people. On this day though there was a lot of fog/smog over the city so the view wasn’t a good as it could be, but there were many young Naval Sailors wondering around in uniform, obviously on a trip around Moscow as we were.
From here we went past Victory park (where I returned a few days later with my in-laws while my wife was working), followed by a tour around Moscow in the van on our way home with lots of interesting facts on the way.
The next day we took them to Vernisazh market at Izmailovsky which was an experience for them, they loved wandering around, and bought a few of the standard souvenirs, but none of the old things being sold by Babushkas in the flea market area. From here we took them to Arbat to experience the ‘atmosphere’ of the place.
Over the next week, as well as sorting out a visa extension for them and just wondering around the city I took them up to Victory Park, completed in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic war (World War II). The central broad avenue on the way up to the main monument and museum is called the Years of War, with markers for each of the years the Soviet Union’s involvement in the war and thus the years of the Great Patriotic War itself. The main monument is a huge obelisk with Nike the Goddess of Victory perched near the top. The obelisk itself is like one huge statue though as there are depictions of war and the names of major Soviet cities carved into the sides of it, with a depiction of St George (patron Saint of Moscow) with a slain dragon, representing Nazi Germany at the feet of his horse. There is a huge museum behind the obelisk, but on this day it was closed, and we didn’t have too much time to spend in the park. We did however take a walk around the park where you can see various artillery and tanks that were moved here under their own steam whilst the park was being constructed then decommissioned and stripped of armaments and technology.
Another day we went for a visit to the Old English Court, firstly built for a wealthy merchant but then donated to English Merchants by Ivan the terrible in 1553 when they were passing through whilst trying to find a northern route through to India. This continued to me a centre of Trade (and sometimes diplomatic relations) between the two countries until 1649 when Tsar Alexsei I dissolved the relationship and kicked the merchants out of the country as a protest to the overthrowing and assassination of Charles I in England following the English Civil war. The building was clad in red brick and used as as apartments in soviet times, but was restored and reopened as a museum in 1994 to coincide with the visit of Queen Elizabeth II. The museum costs very little to get inside but you have to purchase an additional ticket to take photographs, it is well worth a visit as surviving Tudor buildings were used as models when restoring the inside of the building.
All in all they loved seeing the main sights of Moscow in addition to some interesting little places not always visited by foreigners, but we decided to take them up to St Petersburg for their final few days of their extended trip, but more about that in my next post.
Here are the photos of the majority of the places above, click to see the thumbnail to see the full larger version.
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