Last weekend I went on a business trip to Moscow. The city is amazing with this socialist architectural background covered by a capitalist layer. Colorful outdoors; flashy signs; neons; squared, heavy, and gray residential buildings; all known fast-food franchises; huge and impressive monuments; wide streets; non friendly (and corrupt) police; tourists all over; Cyrillic alphabet (which is graphically very beautiful); big malls; matrioska; very rich or very poor people; Audi & Mercedes versus Lada.
I had the opportunity to visit the Red Square, which was closed for the public, and after a 1 hour line I could visit Lenin’s mausoleum. It’s really worthwhile! The architecture is impressive, modern with black and red marble with strong personality and well defined lines; the ambient is dark, very lowlight compared with the outside, you can barely see when you enter; some non-smiling military officers guide you along a course and tell you to stay quiet; obviously no photos are allowed (in fact if you are carrying a camera or a mobile with camera you are not even allowed to enter!); and then here it is: Lenin’s body inside a glass box, perfectly preserved, with a very scenografic light only over his face and hands. To get the feeling you can take a virtual tour in Lenin’s Mausoleum website, which is really loyal to the real one.
I stayed at the Ukraina Hotel, which is one of the 7 big towers Stalin constructed in the 50’s with a unique architecture know as Stalin Classicism.
The hotel’s architecture and interior decoration is still perfectly preserved from its early years. It really gives you the feeling of the socialism period.
mitla 