Come on a guided tour to the Tretyakov State Art Gallery, one of the two largest collections of Russian art. The other (we are not talking about sizes!) is the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

The Collection of Russian Painting Masterpieces

A 10-minute metro ride from the city centre will take you to Kolomenskoe Museum-Reserve, where you can get an idea of what Medieval Moscow looked like. Here you’ll find the oldest garden in Moscow and a favourite estate of Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich, father of Peter the Great. The Church of the Ascension was built in 1532 on the imperial estate of Kolomenskoye to celebrate the birth of the prince who was to become Tsar Ivan IV ('the Terrible'). One of the earliest examples of a traditional wooden tent-roofed church on a stone and brick substructure, it had a great influence on the development of Russian ecclesiastical architecture and is now one of Russia's few UNESCO World Heritage sites.

And finally , one of Moscow's iconic landmarks, Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The current church is the second to stand on this site. The original church, built during the 19th century, took more than 40 years to build. It was destroyed in 1931 on the order of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The demolition was supposed to make way for a colossal Palace of the Soviets to house the country's legislature, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Construction started in 1937 but was halted in 1941 when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union during World War II. Its steel frame was disassembled the following year, and the Palace was never built - but the outdoor pool was. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the current church was rebuilt on the site during 1995–2000.

The famous Kolomenskoe wooden palace used to stand in the tree-lined area close to the Kazan Cathedral. At the time, it was considered to be “the eighth wonder of the world”. Built under Tsar Alexis I’s rule in 1668, it had as many as 270 rooms! Empress Elizabeth (Tsar Alexis’s granddaughter and Peter the Great’s daughter) was born in this palace. However, the wooden palace fell into decay and was disassembled by the order of Catherine the Great by the end of the 18th century. Today, this is a unique historical and artistic reconstruction.