Of course, there’s so much more to Moscow than the Kremlin and Red Square and I’m really not the person to talk about it because I wasn’t there long enough to do much more than moon over the tourist centre but I do have three other things to talk about.
The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour
Just down the river, overlooking the Kremlin, is a gold and white cathedral. It’s been there since 1860. Apart from during the Soviet era when Stalin had it demolished. The Soviets weren’t fans of religion and most of the churches that survived spent those decades as factories or storehouses or something secular. Stalin’s plan was to replace the cathedral with a monstrosity called the Palace of the Soviets. I assume this would be something a bit like Pripyat’s Culture Palace – it’s not actually a palace, because we know the Soviets really didn’t like the monarchy. Moscow’s one would have been something like an administrative centre and congress hall. It was supposed to be the world’s tallest structure at the time and topped with a 100-foot statue of Lenin.
It never got built. The foundations were built but then in 1941, some Germans came to visit Moscow and and Russia found it had other priorities than building this thing. The foundations became an open-air heated circular pool.
After the Soviets were finished, the cathedral was rebuilt. A few bits and pieces were saved from the demolition of the original one but most of it is new and although pictures exist of the old one, they’re in black and white or they’re drawings and it’s not so easy to say “It’s identical to the old one!” All the same, I got the impression that it was a rebuilding rather than a replacement.
It’s a nice enough church inside. It’s big and airy and painted in pastels and it has some hilarious pictures of saints and prophets reading letters – at least, I think that’s what they’re doing. There’s one that looks like a slightly hungover old man opening a bill before breakfast. No photos because it’s a working church and you’re not allowed to take photos. Security wanders around making sure. There’s a big roped-off area in the middle of the church where the floor is noticeably more shiny and there’s the usual big gold iconostasis.
But what’s interesting is the roof. You can buy a ticket to climb far too many steps and enjoy the views over central Moscow. We did it in 2002; the photos are labelled as “The boys on top of a church” but they’re very clearly from the terraces of this cathedral. You can see right over the Kremlin, you can see almost all of Stalin’s Seven Sisters (the man had a thing for ugly-spectacular skyscrapers), right down the river. I’m sure there are other places for panoramic views of the city but offhand, I don’t know where they might be. Go to this one.
Gorky Park
If you’ve had enough of the city, there are places you can escape it. Gorky Park is right in the heart of Moscow but it doesn’t feel like it. Ok, it does, it feels like a city park. It feels just like being in Green Park in London. But you can’t see or hear either the traffic or the buildings. I live in the countryside, more or less, so I know it doesn’t feel like being in the country but that doesn’t make it any less pleasant or any less of an escape from the urban chaos.
I suppose it’s a Soviet monument but it’s a green one. The Soviets built a lot of skyscrapers and big concrete things and they couldn’t quite resist doing that to the park, in the form of a big ugly concrete gate in their favourite over-the-top-huge style.
This is the place to come for an ice cream and to sit and watch the fountains. They’re not the most spectacular fountains in the world but they’re fun. Every hour or so they give a display to music and I’m glad I went to see that. I recognised most of the pieces of music but I can’t name a single one of them. And the fountains aren’t quite in time with the music but they’re making an effort and they’re doing better with dancing fountains than I’d be able to (this is a regular refrain at work when people criticise people’s language skills in their third or fourth language – “And how is your French/Urdu/Kiswahili??”). I enjoyed the ducks paddling around on the water ignoring this going on behind them but disappointed when the Obligatory Twitcher Friend on Facebook confirmed that they’re not in fact Muscovy ducks and that there aren’t Muscovy ducks in Moscow.
I started off sitting at the side because that was where the path led me but after a while I decided to amble down and view the display from all sides and it turns out it looks much better from the front – that is, with the big concrete gate behind it. You can see all the fountains in a row instead of seeing them all hiding behind each other.
But the thing about travel is that you see and experience things and the thing I experienced in Gorky Park was the roller-dancing man. He was on the opposite side to where I’d been sitting and he was older than you’d expect and he was dancing on roller skates. He wasn’t very good at it but again, who am I to criticise? I can’t dance at all and although I can ice skate a little bit (I can go round in circle and not fall over) I haven’t been on roller skates in about twenty years. It made me smile and for Moscow, it’s that thing that you see and treasure that isn’t in the guidebook.
Zaryadye Park
On the other side of the road from St Basil’s is Russia’s youngest park. Its western edge contains some nice whirly-shaped benches that give you a nice view of the crazy cathedral (not possible from any other angle when I was there because of the international military tattoo in Red Square). As you head east, in the direction of Kitay Gorod metro station, you pass through four themed climactic zones. Now, you’ll mostly only notice them if you go into the underground info centres and most of them cost extra and are in Russian so I barely glanced at them before going back outside. The obvious draws of the outside are the views from the hilltop towards Red Square – and the whole park is basically a hill because all the stuff they’re proud of is underneath – an open-air amphitheatre with something that resembles a glass theatre hiding underneath and the Flying Bridge.
The Bridge is a v-shaped walkway sticking out of the hillside and curving out over road and river with no visible support. It doesn’t feel wobbly or bouncy – sometimes these platforms feel pretty unstable – and it offers fairly low-level views over Moscow again. Honestly, all you’re really going to see is the Kremlin, the Embankment Building and the river but do it anyway. I went on my last morning on my way to the airport because I hadn’t bothered roaming over the park properly before then and although it was painfully hot for the entire nearly-three weeks I was in Russia, that morning it looked like it was going to rain.
