Moscow Memorial Synagogue and Holocaust Museum

If you would like to visit the Memorial Synagogue and Holocaust Museum while you Tour Moscow, it is located just a few hundred yards behind the Museum of the Great Patriotic War.

On our Day Tour of Moscow including the World War II Museum, you may substitute the Memorial Synagogue and Holocaust Museum for the New Maiden Convent if you wish.

For those of Jewish faith or anyone whose intellectual curiosity pushes them to learn, the Memorial Synagogue is a very interesting visit. I was there in Feb. 2012 with one of our Moscow  tour guides, Oleg.

We braved -30 C temperatures to go from the metro to the Synagogue where I was completely taken by surprise.

The modern structure of the Memorial Synagogue in Moscow is in a wooded section of the expanse around the Museum of the Great Patriotic War.


When we entered, a historian who works for the Synagogue, Katya, gave us a memorable, personal tour.

In addition to being creatively designed on the interior with Jewish religious symbols in metal-art, the basement houses a high technology Holocaust Museum. Katya’s commentary on the evolution of the Jews in Russian society and their participation as combatants and victims in World War II was riveting.

I highly recommend taking this tour regardless of your faith.

Best of Moscow Walking Tour

This is a walking tour of Moscow which includes visits many of the sights overlooked on Moscow holidays.
The Best of Moscow Tour is frequently scheduled in conjunction with a private tour to:

• Tretyakov Galley
• State Pushkin Gallery of Art
• Gorky House Museum
• Church of Christ our Savior

Almost every building in the historical center of Moscow is associated with different events and celebrated personalities of the Russian history and culture. You will see and hear the stories of the most popular places of the city.

The Best of Moscow Tour includes:

 

• Red Square, the hub of Russia, with its fantastic “stone flower”- St. Basil Cathedral, one of the symbols of Moscow
• Pushkin Square, the most popular meeting spot in Moscow where you can witness the hustle and bustle of  the big city
• Tverskaya street, the main street of the city, where we will visit Yeleseyevskiy Grocery Store. This  one-of-a-kind store was built as a palace and turned into a luxurious grocery store more than a hundred years ago
• Theatre Square with the stunning Bolshoi Theatre
• The notorious Lubyanskaya Square with headquarters of the former KGB
•  The fancy Manezhnaya Square with the Zero Kilometer, a starting point for  all Moscow roads
•  Alexander’s Garden with the eternal flame and  a WW2 memorial, where you may be able to catch the changing of the guards
• Zamoskvoretskiy bridge across the Moskva River for photo stops of a panoramic view of the Kremlin and one of the 7 Stalin’s Sisters;
• Zamoskovorechye, an old neighborhood of Moscow with little churches and stately mansions, some interesting pieces of contemporary art and the most romantic city spot which has the Love bridge with Love trees
• Christ the Savior Cathedral, the main church of Russia and a foot bridge next to it offering some of the best view of the city;
• Arbat street, a lively colorful promenade with numerous cafes, souvenir stalls, street musicians and painters- places that make Moscow one of the most beautiful cities of Russia.

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Museum of the Great Patriot War of 1941-1945

The State Museum of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 is part of a memorial complex at Poklonnaya Gora created to commemorate the victory over Nazism and to honor the heroic deeds and courage of Russian patriots in defending the Motherland. 

Opened in 1995, the memorial complex is made up Victory Park, the Main Victory Monument, the Central Museum of the Great Patriot War of 1941-1945 and the open-air exhibition of Soviet military equipment.

The exhibition has over 100,000 items, including weapons, military vehicles, photos, films, etc. pertaining to wartime.

For the military history buff, this is a must-see.

This Visit is included on the The Golden Ring Russian tour.

Air Force Museum at Monino

About an hour’s train ride north of Moscow, the Air Force Museum at Monino is the finest Russian aviation museum. It was formerly known as the Russian Federation Air Force Museum and, before that,  the USSR Air Force Museum

The facility was once an operational air base from 1932-1956.  The Museum opened in 1960 at the original airfield location and in the original airfield structures.  Once run by the Russian government, it is now an independent facility.

For enthusiasts of military history, the historical legacy preserved here is well worth a visit.

Note: www.RussiantourGuide.com will be happy to do the co ordination for your visit to Monino. We even have pilots of the former “Soviet Air Force” who speak English and will give extra commentary to make your visit more enjoyable.

We must arrange this visit a few days in advance and will require the visitors’ passport details.

Vernisazh Market

Russia’s equivalent of a  ”flea” market,Vernisazh Market is a  huge weekend market, crammed with every possible dealer selling everything and anything you can think of to take home from Moscow.   If  you can’t find a souvenir here, it doesn’t exist!  Matrioshkas  in every shape and size, jewelery, wooden toys, Soviet memorabilia, fine hand-knitted scarves and shawls, fur hats, beautiful linens, original arts and crafts,  etc.  There is something for everyone at this market. 

Vernissage in Izmailovo is the largest exhibition in the world.   The complex, built by Russian architects in the style of pre-Peter Moscow,  is a favorite place of Muscovites and visitors to the city.

Lenin’s Mausoleum

V. I. Lenin, one of the organizers of the October Revolution of 1917, and the founder of the Soviet State, died on January 21, 1924.   Professor Alexei Ivanovich Abrikosov, a prominent Russian pathologist and anatomist at the time, embalmed the body so that it could be displayed to the public.  It is still being displayed to this day. 

A wooden tomb was designed and built by architect Aleksey Shchusev, and the tomb was placed in Red Square by the Kremlin Wall on January 27 so that the Russian people could visit the tomb. The architect Konstatin Melnikov designed the first sarcophagus. 

In 1929 the wooden mausoleum was changed to one made of stone.  A new sarcophagus was designed in 1973 by sculptor Nikolai Tomsky. 

Tens of millions of  people have visited Lenin’s tomb since 1924.  It is still a major attraction in Moscow and visitors wait in long lines to view Lenin’s body.  Photos and videos are forbidden, as is talking in the tomb.

Tretyakov State Gallery

 

The Tretyakov Gallery is a Russian national treasure. It began from the private collection of Pavel Tretyakov in the mid 19th century. Tretyakov himself considered 1856 the official year of his collection’s launch and it was several years later that he gave the collection to the city of Moscow.

Many factors influenced him to begin his collection. Among those included his visits to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the association over the years. As a child he met Russia’s brightest stars. The writer Turgenev, composers Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky, artists Repin, Surikov, Polenov,Vasnetsov, Perov and Kramskoy frequented the Tretyakov house.

At the beginning of World War II the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, which had grown, was in peril. Curators, military personnel and everyday citizens
banded together to pack and ship the most priceless of the gallery’s

collection out of harms way. Shortly after a majority of the works were evacuated the gallery was subject to separate direct hits by Nazi bombs.

Today the Tretyakov Gallery has become more than one physical location. Branches of the gallery house various collections. You will visit the primary
collection of Russian art at the main location.

If you love art and culture, you will appreciate the importance of this collection even more if you take the opportunity to read “Natasha’s Dance” by Orlando Figes. His book on Russian art and culture provides an easy-to-read foundation which helps a tourist appreciate the greatness of the Russian

artists whose works are displayed at the Tretyakov Gallery and other museums in Russia.

This massive picture (left) will leave you speechless. Your Private Moscow Tour Guide will give you the background of the picture and the painter. It is but one example of the massive collection of Russian masterpieces in the Tretyakov Gallery.

Tours of the Tretyakov Gallery are included in our Comprehensive Tour of Russia, the Best of Russia tour or a custom Moscow tour itinerary which we will be happy to create for your Moscow holiday.

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, located on Volkhonka street just opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, is the largest museum of European art in Moscow.

Founded by Professor Ivan Tsvetaeu (father of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva), the Museum opened its doors to the public in 1912. Without the influence of millionaire and philanthropist Yuriy Nechaev-Maltsov and architect Roman Klein this fine arts museum would not exist today.

After the Russian capital was moved to Moscow in 1918, the Soviet government transferred thousands of works from St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum to the new capital. These paintings formed a nucleus of the Pushkin Museum’s collections of Western art . The most important paintings were added later from the State Museum of New Western Art (also called the European Gallery)– Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artwork, including top works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Monet and Matisse.

After World War II some works from the Dresden Gallery in East Germany were stored in Moscow for 10 years at the Museum.  They were finally returned to East Germany, despite strong opposition from Museum officials.

In 1937, Pushkin’s name was appended to the museum because the Soviet Union marked the centenary of the poet’s death that year.

The Pushkin Museum is a main depositary of Troy’s fabulous gold looted from Troy by the German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann and taken by the Soviet Army from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

The International musical festival, Svyatoslav Richter’s “December nights,”
has been held in the Pushkin Museum since 1981.

The collections in the 3 different Pushkin Museum venues:

1. The main museum
2. The European Gallery
3. The Museum of Private collections

are massive. You cannot do justice to the art here in one day.

Allow us to schedule your private tour of Moscow with visits to each of
these magnificent museums on different days. Otherwise you and your private
Moscow tour guide will “overdose” and it would diminish the enjoyment.

Cathedral of Christ the Savior

Adjacent to the Moskva river and near the Kremlin, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was commissioned by Tsar Alexander I to honor those killed in the Napoleonic war of 1812.

The Cathedral took many years to build and did not emerge from its scaffolding until 1860. Some of the best Russian painters of the time  (Kramskoi, Surikov, Vereshchagin) continued to work on the interior for another 20 years. The Cathedral was finally consecrated in 1883.  Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture debuted there the year before.  At the time it was the largest Orthodox church in the world.

The Cathedral was destroyed in 1931 during Stalin’s regime, to make way for what would have been the world’s tallest building, the Palace of the Soviets.  It took more than a year to clear the debris from the site.  The original marble high reliefs were preserved and are now on display at the Donskoy Monastery.  For many years they were the only reminder of the largest Orthodox church ever built.

The building to replace the Cathedral was never constructed. In 1960, on orders from Nikita Krushchev, an open-air swimming pool called Basin Moskva was built instead.

With the end of  Soviet rule, the Russian Orthodox Church received permission to rebuild the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 1990.  Over a million Muscovites donated money to the project, and in 1994 the pool was demolished and the Cathedral reconstruction began. The lower church was consecrated  in 1996, and the completed Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was consecrated in 2000.  The cathedral square is graced by several chapels, designed in the same style as the Cathedral itself.

The first Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who died in 2007, lay in state in the Cathedral prior to his burial in Novodevichy Cemetery.

The Cathedral ‘s location provides a wonderful bird’s eye view of  Moscow.

We can include a tour of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior before or after a tour of the Pushkin Museum of Art. They are across the street from each other.

Also while visiting the Cathedral of Christ the Savior ask your Private Moscow Tour Guide to show you the Love Locks on the Moscow River bridge.

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