Moscow Metro, Moscow

You don’t have to know May 18 is the International Museum Day. You just have to ride the metro. Didn’t notice anything? Listen to the voice calling out the next stop. It’s not the automated tape, as usual.

The former Moscow metro boss, now facing charges for fraud and office abuse, was not all that bad. He had hired old actors with distinguished voices, famous in their time, but now unemployed and broke, to read metro announcements. These tapes are traditionally run to mark public holidays, like New Year, the Victory Day, and now – the Museum Day.

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We visited the metro as a group during the morning peak hour rush. We were caught up in the huge crowd of people rushing to work, it was far more crowded than the New York subway or London underground.

The subway is sunk very deep below the surface. It took several minutes to travel down the escalator; a very steep decent. Once we reached the station we were amazed by the beauty of the decorations depicting scenes from the early days of Communism. The station was extremely busy with a train arriving every minute during our visit. There was only a very short interval to take clear photos, maybe only 15 seconds between trains.

Our group took the train for several stations. It certainly was an experience to remember.

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It’s no coincidence that some of the metro stations are more impressive than art galleries. During the Soviet era, a large amount of money was invested in fitting out some of the central metro stations to convince the people of the advantages of socialism. As a result, not only is the metro system a sightseeing attraction of its own, but it’s also a fascinating insight into the past, with images of woman ploughing the fields and groups of peasants proudly driving tractors intermingling with astronauts and high-tech achievers

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The stations of Moscow's subway system have often been called "the people's palaces", for their elegant designs and lavish and profuse use of marble, mosaics, sculptures and chandeliers. Built during Stalin's rule, these metro stations were supposed to display the best of Soviet architecture and design and show how privileged the lifestyle of the Russian people was.

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If you feel that the high prices in Moscow have taken a toll on your budget, then visiting the Moscow underworld....or the world under the ground....the Moscow metro, is an excellent idea.

Some of the stations are like fabulous museums and are really worth a visit!

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Moscow Metro is famous worldwide for a number of reasons. First of all, it has hundreds of stations that probably add up to more rail-line than in the entirety of Canada. Second, there are something like 9 million daily riders on the Moscow subway system, more than the population of London or New York. Finally, some of the Moscow subway stations have been done up with chandeliers, paintings and the like, making them seem more like opera houses than sister stations of the grimy, depressing stops along the Toronto Transit Commission's lines. The problem is that it is hard to find exactly which stations have the beautiful décor. I stumbled on one - Komsomolskaya - by accident, but the Lonely Planet guide was hopefully useless when it came to finding others. I don't know if pictures are permitted, but I took them anyways - always mindful of avoiding the Militsiya.

A single trip on the subway costs RFR19, which is about 80 cents US. You can get even greater discounts if you buy blocks of tickets. Beware, though, that everything is in cyrillic, so brush up on your characters before you ride the rails.

the moscow metro (subway) stations are very interesting. the platforms are show cases of works of art. the ceilings have chandliers and are kind of like mini palaces. pictured is a communist era wall plaque in the plushchad revolyutsil station.

The Metro in Moscow is one of its shining industrial achievements. Construction on the Metro was begun in 1931 and continues today. The system has over 165 stations and 155 miles of track. Over 9300 trains, traveling sometimes as fast as 80 km/h, navigate the huge system each day. Almost 10 million people ride the Moscow Metro every day, which is more than the New York and London systems combined. We found the Metro to be very efficient, with trains arriving every few minutes.