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Back in the USSR: 10 best events and attractions

Late summer is a great time to visit Moscow and St Petersburg. Sarah Barrell picks the best events and attractions

Published: 21 August 2005 by Independent.co.uk

1. Take an up and under view

There are a few cities in the world where public transport is a tourist sight, rather than a means of getting to one. Moscow is one of them. Its subterranean museum of a metro system is as picture-perfect as the Kremlin - and about as hard to get into during rush hour. In steaming summer months it's still worth pushing and shoving with the locals to take a short journey on the historic blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya metro line. But once you've had enough of the heat, go above ground and take a taxi. The water taxi service plying the Moskva river and canals is one of the most pleasant ways to navigate this sprawling city in warmer months. The Moskva makes an arc of the city centre and within its boundaries are most of Moscow's major attractions. Start at Kiev railway station and pick up a boat snaking south-west along the Kremlin walls for the best cityscape. You can jump on and off en route, each ride costs 100 roubles (£2).

2. Munch among the missiles

While there's a lot to be said for snowy strolls, the warmer months are the most civilised time to visit Moscow's open-air museums. This is also when these museums, set in open parkland, double up as picnic and promenade spots. A case in point is Victory Park, home to the Central Armed Forces Museum. Couples can be found taking post-prandial strolls amid the tanks, combat machinery and strategic missiles that are dotted around the grounds, or idling at the fountain at the park entrance, which is lit a gloriously gory red on autumn evenings. Marginally less surreal is the sculpture park in the grounds of the Tretyakov Art Gallery. This "graveyard to fallen monuments" houses social realist statues of the Soviet era. Along with numerous Stalins, including the enormous statue that stood outside the Bolshoi Theatre, there is a rather gruesome bust of "Iron Felix", the Cheka secret policeman Felix Dzerzhinsky, which was pulled down by crowds outside the KGB headquarters in 1991. Iron Felix now overlooks a spooky sculpture dedicated to those who died in the gulags. Perhaps in an effort to bring a little cheer, the mainstay of this collection represents something of an international hall of fame in which the heads of Shakespeare and Einstein keep random company next to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

The Central Armed Forces Museum, Ulitsa Sovetskoy Armii 2 (00 7 095 681 5367; www.armymuseum.ru), is open Wednesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. Tretyakov Sculpture Park, Krymsky Val 10 (00 7 095 230 7788), is open Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-8pm.

3. Grab a deckchair on the beach

Thanks to the bestseller by Martin Cruz Smith and subsequentfilm, Moscow's Park of Culture and Recreation, Gorky Park, is widely known in the West. The park, named after Marxist writer Maxim Gorky, is a 3km stretch of public recreation area by the Moskva river. Laid out in 1928 as a funfair in ornamental gardens, hedonism has reached unprecedented heights in Gorky Park with the introduction of a beach. OK, Moscow's equivalent of Paris Plage is not exactly on the river and the "beach" is sand-free but this is a uniquely New Russian experience. Cast aside the medical certificate you often need for city pools, grab a deckchair and listen to a DJ spinning an assortment of lounge and chill-out tunes. Hang on until after dark, and the volume gets turned up, the deckchairs folded away, and you'll find yourself among one of Moscow's most scantily-clad clubbing crowds.

Gorky Beach, 9 Ul Krymsky Val, Gorky Park. Open daily, 11am-12am, until end of Sept.

4. Book early for the Bolshoi

Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, literally"big" theatre, takes its tutus on assorted international tours during August. This year it reopenson 10 September with a series of its latest hit opera productions, one after the other. Opera fans could come for a week and see two or three award-winning stagings from the Russian repertoire that is less commonelsewhere. The inaugural performance is a new interpretation of Puccini's Madame Butterfly. Ballet fans shouldn't miss the latest Swan Lake.

The Bolshoi Theatre (00 7 095 974 7317; www.bolshoi.ru).

5. Order borscht for two, with a view

Follow up your performance with some post-theatre dining. To remain a cut above these days you have to offer "terrace" dining. One of the city's popular al fresco spots is Coffemania (13, Bolshaya Nikitskaya, 00 7 095 924 0075) with a terrace facing the Moscow Conservatory. On warm mornings, due to an air-conditioning system as rickety as the grand old building itself, the conservatory throws open its windows and restaurant patrons are treated to a preview of coming performances. In the evenings, diners can watch Moscow's best-dressed music cognoscenti file in and out of the theatre, while eating posh versions of cold borscht (beetroot soup) and nouveau Russian salads. An outdoor venue with "face control" (a snooty door policy) is Park, just outside Gorky Park's back gate. Low tables, Kazak rugs and hammock-style seating supply the Asian theme. Couple this with plentiful hookah pipes and a river view and you could almost kid yourself you were looking out over Istanbul's Bosphorus. Service is slow and not a little sniffy, but the food, a mixture of Uzbek, Russian and central Asian, is great. This is one of the best places to watch well-heeled locals knocking back the bubbly while dining on gentrified versions of the street vendor's favourite, shashlik, a skewer kebab.

Park, 9 Krymsky Val (00 7 095 954 1673).

6. Promenade around the palaces

Autumn is the best time to see St Petersburg's summer palaces. The suburbs are home to the great palaces of Catherine the Great - Peterhof and Pavlovsk. In September you get the best of their formal gardens, follies and fountains, minus the queues of tour buses. September is also the last time you can see the "trick" fountains designed by Peter the Great at Peterhof before they close for the winter. This complex system of pressure-activated fountains were what constituted a good gag in early Tsarist Russia, giving unsuspecting dignitaries a soaking as they took a turn around the gardens of the "Russian Versailles". The Grand Cascade, with its three enormous waterfalls and 64 fountains, is the centrepiece, all fed by pressure from underground rivers wending their way to the Gulf of Finland. The great palace at Peterhof (00 7 812 427 7425) is open 11am-6pm, closed Mondays and the last Tuesday of the month. Tours are from 11am-5pm. A train from Baltiyskaya Railway Station to New Peterhof Station takes 35 minutes. From there, pick up one of the many buses going to the palace's Park stop. Tour boats travel to Peterhof from the Hermitage Museum Wharf until the end of September. Taxi-buses make the same journey from Prospect Veteranov, Baltiyskaja and Leninsky Prospect metro stations.

Pavlovsk (00 7 812 470 2155, www.pavlovsk.org) is open Saturday to Thursday, 10am-5pm, closed on the first Monday of the month, restricted access on Thursday. A train from Vitebsk Station to Pavlovsk takes about 30 minutes. The main entrance to the park is opposite the station. Buses 280, 283, 493 connect the station to the Great Palace. Catherine's Palace (http://eng. tzar.ru) is open 10am-5pm, closed Tuesday and the last Monday of the month.

7. Float down the Neva

Get out on to St Petersburg's complex web of waterways before they freeze. From water level you begin to see why St Petersburg gets its epithet, the Venice of the North. Autumn is the best time to get out on to the Neva river and connecting canals - it's warm enough, and midsummer's congestion has gone. Tourist boats can be found at regular intervals along the waterways. The trick is to hop on to one that's almost full (unless you don't mind bobbing around until it fills up) and double check that the commentary is in English. To avoid the rather relentless nasal commentary that characterises these cruises, which cost around £7 an hour, take a water taxi. Introduced to St Petersburg this year, the taxis have fixed routes, compulsory stops and you can ride all day for 350 roubles (£6.60) or 30 roubles (60p) per ride. The stops haven't been signposted yet but the blue and white waterbuses have pretty obvious moorings outside key sights.

8. Get an earful at the opera

St Petersburg is the birthplace of Russian literature, ballet and opera, and the city's cultural season is a world heavyweight. At the pinnacle of this artistic apex is the Mariinsky Theatre, formerly known as the Kirov and home to the Kirov Opera and Ballet. The theatre may be associated with dancers such as Pavlova, Nijinsky and Nureyev, but the current buzz here is opera. This is the first love of artistic director Valery Gergiev, the man responsible for keeping the theatre on its financial feet during the early 1990s. After a long summer closed for international tours, the new season opens on 20 September with Tchaikovsky's late masterpiece The Queen of Spades, conducted by Gergiev himself, and continues with Carmen, Turandot and Eugene Onegin.

The Mariinksy Theatre (00 7 812 326 4141; www.mariinsky.ru/en).

9. Ramble like a Romanov

Late September is known as Golden Autumn in St Petersburg, and this is the best time to see the gardens surrounding Pavlovsk Palace. Once the hunting grounds of the Tsars, this 1,500-acre estate on the outskirts of St Petersburg was landscaped and designed for autumn flowering trees and shrubs. It's also the least known of the royal palaces. This is the only former Tsarist residence where you can stroll around like a Romanov, with acres of gardens and woodland to yourself.

See above for details of Pavlovsk Palace.

10. Get hooked on classics

Autumn in St Petersburg heralds a programme of classical music festivals. The Early Music Festival from 20 September to 4 October invites you to "immerse yourself in the music of the 18th century's youngest and most fashionable court, the Russian Imperial Court". Featuring Russia's only baroque orchestra, playing alongside musicians from Flanders, Belgium, Italy and the United States, concerts take place in an enticing list of venues, including the State Conservatoire, the Hermitage Theatre, Pavlovsk Palace, Catherine's Palace and the Great Palace at Peterhof. Contact The Early Music Festival (www.earlymusic.ru/en/festival/index.html).

The author travelled as a guest of Kirker Holidays (0870-112 3333; www.kirkerholidays.com), which offers a six-night itinerary visiting Moscow and St Petersburg from £1,489 per person, based on two sharing. The price includes return flights, b&b accommodation, transfers, overnight train transfers between Moscow and St Petersburg, and a visa.

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