Day 3 in Moscow
Explore Moscow outside the Red Square and the Kremlin
Try to find tickets for opera or ballet at the Bolshoi Theater. It is a historic theater which is amongst the oldest and most renowned in the world. The Theater also hosts the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, a world-famous leading school of ballet. The Bolshoi held plays like Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, Adam’s Giselle, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and Khachaturian’s Spartacus. If you are running out of time, you can choose to go on a theater historic building tour, accompanied by a guide who will highlight the main moments and details related to the Bolshoi.
Reserve some time to wander through the Tretyakov Gallery – the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world. The gallery was opened in 1856 by the merchant Pavel Tretyakov, and was initially comprising about 2,000 works. Nowadays, the collection contains more than 130,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures. In 1985, the Gallery was merged with a gallery of contemporary art, so that you have the great opportunity to feel the old and new Russia under the same roof. Outside the Gallery, there is one of the tallest outdoor statues in the world – Zurab Tsereteli’s 86-meter-tall statue of Peter the Great.
Finally, head to the Alexander Gardens – a huge urban public park right in the center of Moscow. Besides the virgin nature of the park, there are several tourist attractions that are worth seeing. First of all, at the main entrance, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is. The monument contains the body of a soldier who fell during the Great Patriotic War, and outside the tomb there is the eternal flame. The middle of the garden is emphasized by the Kutafya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin, marking today the main public entrance to the Kremlin. In the end, the lower garden stretches to the Borovitskaya Tower, another pedestrian and vehicular entrance to the Kremlin.
