Moscow's Red Square: Russia's Most Iconic Stage

Red Square — Krasnaya Ploshchad — has been the central public space of Moscow since the 15th century, when Ivan the Great cleared the area east of the Kremlin to create a market and assembly ground. The name does not refer to the colour of the cobblestones or to communism — krasnaya in Old Russian meant 'beautiful' as well as 'red', and the square was known as the Beautiful Square long before it became associated with Soviet power. The square is 330 metres long and 70 metres wide, and is flanked by the Kremlin wall to the west, the State Historical Museum to the north, GUM department store to the east, and Saint Basil's Cathedral to the south.

Saint Basil's Cathedral, built between 1555 and 1561 by Ivan the Terrible to commemorate his victory over the Khanate of Kazan, is one of the most recognisable buildings in the world — its nine chapels, each topped with an onion dome of different colour and pattern, create a silhouette that seems to belong to a fairy tale rather than to the capital of a great empire. The cathedral was designed by the architects Postnik Yakovlev and Barma, and legend has it that Ivan the Terrible had them blinded after its completion so they could never build anything more beautiful. The interior is a labyrinth of narrow passages and small chapels, each decorated with frescoes and icons.

The Kremlin — the fortified complex of palaces, cathedrals, and government buildings that has been the seat of Russian power since the 12th century — occupies a triangular site of 27 hectares on the bank of the Moscow River, enclosed by 2.2 kilometres of crenellated red brick walls. The Cathedral of the Assumption, where the tsars were crowned from 1547 to 1896, contains the tombs of the metropolitans and patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Armoury Chamber museum houses the treasures of the tsars — Fabergé eggs, coronation regalia, and the collection of carriages that includes the gilded coach used at the coronation of Catherine the Great.

The Moscow Metro, opened in 1935, is one of the most extraordinary public transport systems in the world — a network of 15 lines and 263 stations, many of them decorated with mosaics, sculptures, stained glass, and chandeliers that were intended to demonstrate the achievements of Soviet civilisation to the workers who used them. The stations of the Circle Line, built in the late 1940s and early 1950s, are the most elaborate — Komsomolskaya, with its baroque ceiling mosaics, and Kievskaya, with its scenes of Ukrainian life, are among the finest. The metro carries nine million passengers a day and is one of the most efficient urban transport systems in the world.

The Tretyakov Gallery, in the Zamoskvorechye district south of the Kremlin, contains the finest collection of Russian art in the world — over 130,000 works spanning a thousand years of Russian painting, from medieval icons to the avant-garde masterpieces of Kandinsky and Malevich. The gallery was founded by Pavel Tretyakov, a Moscow merchant who spent his fortune collecting Russian art in the 19th century and donated his collection to the city in 1892. The Old Tretyakov Gallery, in its distinctive red brick building designed by Viktor Vasnetsov, houses the pre-revolutionary collection; the New Tretyakov Gallery, in a Soviet-era building on Krymsky Val, houses the 20th-century collection.

The Bolshoi Theatre, on Teatralnaya Square a few hundred metres from Red Square, is one of the great opera and ballet houses of the world — a neoclassical building of 1856, with a portico of eight Ionic columns and a quadriga of Apollo above the entrance, that has been the home of the Bolshoi Ballet and Opera since the 19th century. The theatre was extensively renovated between 2005 and 2011, and the restored interior — with its six tiers of boxes, its crystal chandelier, and its red and gold colour scheme — is one of the most beautiful in the world. Attending a performance at the Bolshoi is one of the great cultural experiences Moscow offers.

The best time to visit Moscow is in late spring (May-June) or early autumn (September), when the weather is pleasant and the city is at its most vibrant. The summer months of July and August can be hot and humid, but the long days and the outdoor terraces of the restaurants and cafés make the city particularly lively. The winter months from November to March are cold — temperatures regularly drop below minus 20 degrees Celsius — but the snow transforms the city, and the New Year celebrations, which are the most important holiday in the Russian calendar, are spectacular. The White Nights of late June, when the sky never fully darkens, are a magical time to visit.