Moscow: Basic Things You Need to Know Explore Stalin-era skyscrapers, noisy parks, bars serving infusions, and ancient convents all in one city

Moscow is an uncatchable city. Journalist Jury Saprykin once wrote, ‘Moscow is easy to recognize; it always has a new general construction plan, there is demolition of blocks and cutting through for new streets, freshly dug construction pits and new buildings still in progress, and finally, a pavement protected with the notorious green-and-white fencing.’ There is a middle-of-19th-century Moscow, a staid city with village-like buildings. There is a beginning-of-20th-century Moscow, a European-type cosmopolitan center filled with multi-storey tenement buildings. There is an early-Soviet Moscow, already a capital of another state, with the most modern, avant-garde architecture of the time and swarms of people filling narrow streets. There is a Stalinist Moscow, an imperial city exhausted by repressions, buttoned up, full of skyscrapers and Roman motives. There is a Moscow of the Thaw, with its still brand-new bedroom suburbs, the Palace of Young Pioneers and pavilion-cafes with beer and dancing. And so on, and so forth. Luckily, nothing was lost without any trace, and sometimes tiny pieces of all these eras can be found in one street. Just look out for them.