Day Schedule

➤Breakfast

➤Guided tour to the State Tretyakov Gallery, the most famous museum of Russian art in the world

➤Panoramic driving city tour: the Novodevichy Convent with the guided tour inside, Sparrow Hills, Stalin's skyscrapers tour, the VDNKh

➤Guided tour to the Museum of Cosmonautics

➤Transfer to the train station to board the overnight train to Kazan

The State Tretyakov Gallery

It is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world. The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection, which might later grow into a museum of national art. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his already famous collection of approximately 2,000 works (1,362 paintings, 526 drawings, and 9 sculptures) to the Russian nation. The collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits, ranging from Theotokos of Vladimir and Andrei Rublev's Trinity to the monumental Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky and the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich.

Stalin's skyscrapers

The Seven Sisters are a group of seven skyscrapers in Moscow designed in the Stalinist style. They were built from 1947 to 1953, in an elaborate combination of Russian Baroque and Gothic styles. At the time of construction, they were the tallest buildings in Europe, and the Main building of Moscow State University remained the tallest building in Europe until 1997. There were two more skyscrapers in the same style planned that were never built: the Zaryadye Administrative Building and the Palace of the Soviets.

VDNKh

Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (Vystavka Dostizheniy Narodnogo Khozyaystva, VDNKh) is a permanent general-purpose trade show and amusement park in Moscow, Russia. Cosmonauts Alley and the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman statue are situated just outside the main entrance to VDNKh. It also borders Moscow Botanical Garden and a smaller Ostankino Park, and in recent years the three parks served as a united park complex.

In 1992, VDNKh was renamed, receiving the new acronym VVC, which remained in use until 2014. It occupies 2,375,000 square metres of which 266,000 square metres are used for indoor exhibits. The territory of VDNKh is greater than that of the Principality of Monaco and has approximately 400 buildings.

Novodevichy Convent

Novodevichy Convent, also known as Bogoroditse-Smolensky Monastery is probably the best-known cloister of Moscow. Its name, sometimes translated as the New Maidens' Monastery, was devised to differ from the Old Maidens' Monastery within the Moscow Kremlin. Unlike other Moscow cloisters, it has remained virtually intact since the 17th century. In 2004, it was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site.