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 .
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