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Orientation tour by bus
This
tour includes visiting Moscow highlights, such as Red
Square, the Sparrow Hills Observation Platform at the
base of the Moscow State University skyscraper, the
Victory Park. Red Square is the famous historical center
of Moscow, next to the Kremlin walls. Feast your eyes on
Saint Basil’s Cathedral, the Historical Museum, the
Minin and Pozharskiy monument, and the Lenin Mausoleum.
The best view of the Kremlin will be seen from
Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya, across the river.
Excursion to the Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow
Kremlin is the heart of the city and country, the place
to which most Russian roads lead and from which most
Russian power emanates. The Kremlin was once the center
of Russia’s Church as well as our state. The Kremlin
occupies a roughly triangular plot of land covering
little Borovitsky Hill on the north bank of the Moscow
River. A Kremlin is a town’s fortified stronghold, and
the first short, wooden wall around Moscow was built in
the 1150’s.
Excursion to the Golden Ring town of Sergiev Posad
including St. Sergius Monastery
Sergiev
Posad is the town in which the Trinity Monastery of St
Sergius, one of Russia’s most important religious and
historical landmarks and a place of both spiritual and
national pilgrimage. Sergiev Posad (Zagorsk) is 60 km
from the edge of Moscow on the Yaroslavl road. The monk
Sergius of Radonezh, who became the patron saint of
Russia, founded the monastery around 1340. It is a Lavra,
or “exalted” monastery, and the main link in a chain of
fort-monasteries defending Moscow; it grew enormously
wealthy through the gifts of tsars, nobles and merchants
looking for divine support.
Excursion to the Tretiakov Picture Gallery
The
Tretiakov Gallery reopened in 1995 after a nine-year
renovation. The Tretiakov houses the world’s best
collection of Russian icons and an outstanding
collection of other pre-Revolutionary Russian art,
particularly the 19th-century Peredvizhniki.
It is one of the World’s most famous museums.
Kolomenskoye State
Historical, Architectural, Natural and Landscape
Reservation
Kolomenskoye is a picturesque place
in the south of Moscow on the banks of the Moskva River.
In the 15th to the 17th century
Kolomenskoye was first the Grand Duke’s and later the
Tsar's residence. Peter the Great spent his childhood
there. The architectural ensemble of Kolomenskoye
includes the Church of the Ascension, the church and
belfry of St. George the Warrior, the Church of Our Lady
of Kazan, the Water Tower and several auxiliary
buildings. Among its green plantations of special value
are its lime-tree lane planted in the 19th
century and a relic oak-tree grove where some trees are
from 600 to 800 years old.
The
Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
The museum was opened to the public in
1912 as a Museum of Fine Art named after Emperor
Alexander III and attached to Moscow University. It was
given its present name in 1937. The museum has one of
the biggest collections of foreign works of art from
ancient times to this day. The museum's collections of
Dutch, Flemish and French schools are especially
interesting. One can see here invaluable
Impressionist and Post-impressionist paintings, but this
museum also has a wide selection of European works from
the Renaissance onward – mostly appropriated from
private collections after the revolution – and a good
display of ancient Egyptian art.
The
Novodevitchy Convent and Cemetery
The
ensemble of the Novodevitchy Convent is situated in a
most picturesque place in the southwest of Moscow, at a
bend of the Moskva River. It is an outstanding monument
of 16th and 17th century
architecture, an exceptionally expressive complex of
structures in the Moscow Baroque style. By 1926 the
Convent was transformed into a historical life-style and
arts museum.
Excursion to the Golden Ring towns of Vladimir and
Suzdal
Vladimir,
which gave way to Moscow as Russia’s capital, is now
little different from a hundred other medium-sized
Russian industrial towns – except that it has two of the
most beautiful buildings in Russia (the Assumption
Cathedral, and the Cathedral of St. Dimitry). Suzdal, 35
km north of Vladimir, is special not just for its lovely
old monasteries, convents and churches, but also because
they haven’t been strangled by 20th-century
ugliness, noise and pollution. Suzdal is uniquely
peaceful among Russian tourist towns, and the slightly
unreal ‘living museum’ atmosphere resulting from its
protected status is a small price to pay.
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