Travel through time with Moscow
The Moscow Metro ranks among the ten most beautiful metro systems in the world. It has 243 stations, including 44 stations with cultural-landmark status, and 14 lines with a total route length of 405 kilometres, including the Moscow Central Circle railway and the Monorail line. This living system consists of tracks and trains, beautiful stations and convenient underpasses; but it also breathes, grows, cares for people and loves them. The system loves its passengers and its city.
«Moscow-870 train passengers will be able to ponder a chess problem from grandmaster Alyokhin and study early 20th century repertoire of the Bolshoi Theatre,».
said Deputy Moscow Mayor for Economic Policy and Property and Land Relations Natalya Sergunina.
The Moscow Metro has been changing rapidly in the past ten years. The most important changes include the so-called theme trains that are lavishly decorated with specific concepts and deal with famous people and events in Russian history.
The new theme train, Moscow-870, was launched on 24 August, in the run-up to City Day celebrations. It will run on the Circle Line until December. The Moscow-870 train is the system’s 23rd theme train. Regular riders have become used to these trains and smile each time they see them arrive.
The Moscow-870’s carriage exteriors were decorated under a 2017 City Day concept. The design is based on the unusual textile ornamentation invented by Soviet artists Varvara Stepanova and Lyubov Popova in 1923-1924. These patterns are worth looking at!
Photos of outstanding Moscow residents and the Russian capital’s famous architectural landmarks are hanging on carriage walls. About 70 rare archive photos selected for this project can only been seen aboard this train. These rare photos include a 1901 photo portrait of Konstantin Stanislavsky and a 1940 photo of Nobel Prize winner Vitaly Ginzburg. At that time, he was a postgraduate student with Lomonosov Moscow State University’s physics faculty, and the photo shows him working at a university laboratory.
While riding the Moscow-870 theme train, passengers put aside their mobile phones and smartphones and start reading what’s written before their eyes, including quotes from the biographies of famous city residents, excerpts from poems and verses and fascinating facts. For example, do you know how many football matches legendary goal keeper Lev Yashin played without missing a single ball? And near what famous local skyscraper did fictional police officer Uncle Styopa from Sergei Mikhalkov’s poem make his rounds? Or what the name of outstanding chess player Alexander Alyokhin’s cat was? Take a ride aboard this train and you will learn even more interesting facts.
The theme train has one more carriage that differs from the others in terms of graphic design. But the train’s entire concept has, nevertheless, been preserved. This carriage is also dedicated to Moscow’s history, as narrated by the newspaper Izvestia. Over the past 100 years, this publication has compiled a chronicle of the Russian capital’s history. Each day the newspaper told its readers about the main events, including the city’s renovation, construction of Moscow State University and the National Exhibition of Economic Achievements (VDNKh), the 1980 Summer Olympics, the 1957 World Festival of Youth and Students, military parades and festive displays, the defence of the city and Victory Day celebrations.
