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Moscow Museum
Formerly the Museum of the History of Moscow, this excellent museum has a new name, a new location and a new mission. The permanent history exhibit demonstrates how the city has spread from its starting point at the Kremlin. It is heavy on artefacts from the 13th and 14th centuries
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Yaroslavs Court
Across a footbridge from the Kremlin are the remnants of an 18th-century market arcade. Beyond that is the market gatehouse, an array of churches sponsored by 13th- to 16th-century merchant guilds, and a road palace built in the 18th century as a rest stop for Catherine the Great.T
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Finland Station
Rebuilt in the 1970s in rectilinear Soviet style, the Finland Station (Finlyandsky vokzal) endures as a place of historical significance, where Lenin finally arrived in 1917 after 17 years in exile abroad. Here he gave his legendary speech from the top of an armoured car to a crowd
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Russian Museum of Ethnography
This excellent museum displays the traditional crafts, customs and beliefs of more than 150 cultures that make up Russia’s fragile ethnic mosaic. It’s a marvellous collection with particularly strong sections on the Jews of Russia, Transcaucasia and Central Asia, including rugs and
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Museum of Zoology
One of the biggest and best of its kind in the world, the Museum of Zoology was founded in 1832 and has some amazing exhibits, including a vast blue whale skeleton that greets you in the first hall. The highlight is unquestionably the 44,000-year-old woolly mammoth thawed out of th
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Ploshchad Lomonosova
Named after the great scientist Mikhail Lomonosov, this small square forms the southwestern end of the Carlo Rossi–designed ensemble and is the best spot from which to admire the ideal symmetrical proportions of ul Zodchego Rossi: the buildings on this street are 22m wide, 22m apar
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Geden Sheddup Goichorling
Geden Sheddup Goichorling is the oldest khurul in Kalmykia and consists of a lavishly decorated large temple from 1996, a small temple behind it containing the throne of the Dalai Lama, and a brick cottage for monks, surrounded by the steppe. To get there, take marshrutka 15 at the
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Rerikh Museum
Nikolai Rerikh (known internationally as Nicholas Roerich) was a Russian artist from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose fantastical artwork is characterised by rich colours, primitive style and mystical themes. This museum, founded by the artist’s son Sergei, includes wo
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Ascension Church
The restored late 18th-century Ascension Church is the oldest in Yekaterinburg and rises up moodily alongside parkland perfect for a stroll.
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Angara Dam
Some 6km southeast of the centre, the 1956 Angara Dam is 2km long. Its construction raised Lake Baikal by up to 1m and caused environmental problems, most notably the silencing of the so-called singing sands on Baikal’s eastern shore. The dam itself is hardly an attraction but moor
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Solovetsky Forced Labour Camps & Prison 1920–1939
Inside former gulag barracks, this excellent exposition (in Russian) takes you through the different stages of the Solovetsky gulag – from punishing counter-revoluntionary elements and providing a slave labour force to build the infamous Belomorsky Canal, to the summary mass execut
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Gora Sekirnaya
Literally translated as Hatchet Mountain, this infamous 71m-high hill was the site of tortures described in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago . The unassuming hilltop Ascension Church (1857–62) that doubles as a lighthouse was used for solitary confinement. With the cold,
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Yelizarov Museum
Lenin’s wife’s family lived in this apartment-turned-museum and VIadimir Ilyich himself laid low here before the revolution while organising the workers. The delightful turn-of-the-20th-century fittings have been preserved intact, including a telephone that still bears Lenin’s home
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Winter Palace of Peter I
Excavations beneath the Hermitage Theatre in the late 1970s revealed remains of the principal residence of Peter the Great, including a large fragment of the former state courtyard, as well as several suites of palace apartments. Some rooms have been restored to their appearance du
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Pasternak House
Boris Pasternak – poet, author of Doctor Zhivago and winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for literature – lived for a long time on Moscow’s southwestern outskirts, just 5km beyond the city’s outer ring road, where there is now the Pasternak House-Museum. Run by his descendents, its an a
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Kuznetsk Fortress
The restored stone ramparts of the Kuznetsk Fortress are massive and topped with cannons but represent only 20% of their 1810 extent. Kids ride ponies around the attractive grounds and there are couple of modest museums that you can pop into – the archaeology museum, which contains
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Regional Museum
Not essential viewing but hosts some good temporary exhibitions.
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Proekt_Fabrika
Since 2004 the functioning October glass factory has shared its space with this innovative art venue. Fabrika was the first independent, nonprofit contemporary art organisation in Moscow; nowadays it is home to architectural firms, a publishing house and a film studio, in addition
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Tsarist
At the regional museum, pick up the darling Stary Blagoveshchensk (Old Blagoveshchensk) map (R10, in Russian) to plot your own walking tour of the dozens of glorious tsarist-era buildings on shady backstreets around the centre. The most impressive buildings are on ul Lenina within
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Tsar Bell
Beside (not inside) the Ivan the Great Bell Tower stands the world’s biggest bell, a 202-tonne monster that has never rung. The bas-reliefs of Empress Anna and Tsar Alexey, as well as some icons, were etched on its sides. An earlier version, weighing 130 tonnes, fell from its belf
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