Moscow holds the world's largest collection of Russian art, an opera company running since 1776, and the canvases that rewrote European painting. This three-day route moves from Zamoskvorechye's icons to Renzo Piano's power station and the gallery cellars of Winzavod.
Russia's national collection of painting in 62 halls behind Vasnetsov's fairytale facade: Rublev's Trinity, Ivanov's vast Appearance of Christ, Repin, Serov and Vrubel. Open Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00, Thu to 21:00.
The 1687 parish church is Moscow Baroque at its most carved — white-stone 'cockscomb' gables cut against red brick, with a six-tier bell tower that opens for guided climbs over the Zamoskvorechye rooftops.
The 20th-century wing tells the whole story in one sweep: Malevich's Black Square and Suprematist grids, Kandinsky, Goncharova's Rayonism, then Socialist Realism and the nonconformists of the 1960s basements.
Some 800 sculptures along the river, including the Dzerzhinsky statue hauled off Lubyanka in 1991 and ranks of retired Lenins and Stalins — Soviet monuments resited among modern work rather than smashed.
Moscow's museum of world art in Roman Klein's 1912 neoclassical hall: Egyptian mummies and Fayum portraits, Schliemann's Trojan gold, and the Greek Court of full-size plaster casts. Tue–Sun 11:00–20:00.
Next door hang the Shchukin and Morozov merchant collections: Monet, Gauguin's Tahiti canvases, Matisse's decorative panels and more than fifty Picassos, bought from Paris studios before 1914 and nationalised in 1918.
Tours of Kavos's 1856 auditorium take you into the imperial box, the six gilded tiers under the Muses chandelier, and the workshops behind the historic stage restored in 2011. Sold only through the official site.
The 1901 hall on Bolshaya Nikitskaya where Rachmaninoff, Oistrakh and Richter played, ringed by medallion portraits of fourteen composers and an 1899 Cavaillé-Coll organ. Concerts begin at 19:00 most evenings.
A 1524 fortified convent and UNESCO site, its red-and-white Naryshkin Baroque towers reflected in the pond that Tchaikovsky sketched for Swan Lake — with the cemetery alongside holding Chekhov, Gogol and Shostakovich.
Bolshaya Sadovaya 10, where Bulgakov lived from 1921 to 1924 and set Woland's ball in The Master and Margarita. The stairwell carries decades of visitor graffiti, and Patriarch's Ponds is a ten-minute walk south.
A 1907 power station on the Bolotnaya embankment rebuilt by Renzo Piano into a free arts house — commissioned installations under the turbine hall's blue roof beams, a film programme, choir rehearsals and a planted birch grove.
A 19th-century wine factory turned into Moscow's gallery cluster: pop/off/art, XL and Osnova in the brick cellars, artist studios upstairs, and the vaulted Big Wine Store used for large installations and photo shows.